In her ongoing work Return, Yufan Lu uses a thermal camera to carry out a remembrance ritual following the passing of her laolao (maternal grandmother). Lu uses her own body to live as laolao once did in her home, capturing traces of her own body, through which laolao’s blood still runs. She traces the touch of her hand on laolao’s belongings, thinking how she once cherished them. She strokes her laolao’s image in old photographs, just as she once held her with her hands, leaving her warmth on her body.

Lu creates a domestic space at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte and fills it with her desire to bring back a departed soul through hands that give lifeless objects warmth, shape, and love; videos played in an endless loop symbolising the memory of a life that keeps returning to those who miss it; a photobook with no beginning or end; and her laolao’s final notes from a health TV programme, transcribed by her mother and passed down as family knowledge.

When the artist’s laolao was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, the Covid pandemic was spreading. Thermal cameras were widely used in public spaces across China to monitor people’s biometric data as part of pandemic control measures. Lu transforms this top-down, authoritative tool into an emotional medium to express her grief and contemplate life and death, while also visualising time, memory, and the photograph’s punctum. Growing up in a typical Chinese family, where expressing love is often seen as embarrassing, Lu feels closer to her laolao than ever before.

At the end of the exhibition, the artist invites viewers to touch a soft photograph with their hands. Created from a thermal image of one of laolao’s old photos, it has been enlarged so that its silhouette mirrors the size of a baby.

Yufan Lu (b.1991, Tianjin, China) lives and works in Helsinki and Tianjin. She explores image-making as a way of thinking, remembering, feeling and living. Her work takes the form of photography, sculpture, photobook, exhibition, and everyday life. Lu is currently pursuing an MA in photography at Aalto University. Her work has been exhibited in China, Finland and internationally since 2017, and she has received awards including the PHMuseum Grant New Generation Honorable Mention, the Firecracker Photography Grant, and the Encontros da Imagem Photobook Award. She is also a member of the 2020 Joop Swart Masterclass alumni.

@lufaway
www.luyufanphotography.com

The exhibition and artist’s work have been supported by Aalto University Department of Art and Media.

Yufan Lu
Return
7 – 30 March 2025
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte

image: Yufan Lu, Return