Li Junyu & Guo Jianping

Li Junyu is an artist and faculty member in the Fiber Art Department at the China Academy of Art. She received her Ph.D. from the China Academy of Art in 2022, specializing in fiber art under the mentorship of Professors Shi Hui and Yang Zhenyu. In 2017, she earned her MFA in Fiber Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in recent exhibitions such as Labyrinth within the Realm — The 6th Emerging Fiber Art Exhibition, Weaving Dialogues — Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy and Fiber Art in Bulgaria, The New Craft —The 6th International Traveling Exhibition, and The Subversive Threads — The 5th Emerging Fiber Art Exhibition, etc. Her works have been collected by institutions including the Textile Arts Center (USA), the Delaware Art Museum (USA), as well as by private collectors.

Guo Jianping is a faculty member at Communication University of Zhejiang and holds a Ph.D. from the China Academy of Art. His art practice and research focus on contemporary art, particularly in media and video art, as well as installation. His research interests include art philosophy, contemporary art theory and movements, art communication, and media archaeology. He is the author of the book From Object to Event.

Credit:Li Junyu&Guo Jianping

FAM:000–∞.Wooden window frames, cotton thread, film negatives, screens, motion-sensing cameras.Variable depending on space.2025
"Family" is no longer a closed unit defined solely by bloodline, marriage, or generational ties. Instead, it has become a set of shifting, fluid, and heterogeneous relational nodes. While traditional family structures are dissolving, new forms of intimacy, companionship, and shared living continue to generate evolving “family units.”
FAM:000–∞ is a multidimensional system exploring the reconstruction of the concept of family. It uses lace weaving to recreate the “group portraits” that mark human efforts to define family, placing these images within old window frames to form a visual archive of time, memory, and identity. In some of these window-defined structures, viewers are not only observers but also become part of the work: they are captured in real time and inserted into temporary “family portraits.” These images are algorithmically recomposed, forming provisional “family units” named as NODEs. Each family is an independent node in a decentralized “actor-network”. In this system, “000” is not merely a number, but a symbolic starting point: it represents the codified structure of the traditional family—typically modeled as father/mother/child and the basic unit of intimacy, care, and cohabitation. The symbol “∞” suggests the boundless, ever-expanding diversity of family formations moving into the future. The project thus charts the evolution of the family from a normative model toward a pluralistic, open, and mobile constellation of intimate relations. In this network, NODEs are no longer “members of a family,” but are themselves complete, parallel family units. They might represent traditional nuclear families, contemporary co-living arrangements, pet-based relationships, emotional or spiritual bonds, or even families formed by virtual beings. There is no central point or lineage among these NODEs, and they can be reorganized at any time, forming a generative, non-hierarchical, and intimate structure
Ultimately, through the “window”—an ancient boundary, a mode of seeing, and a metaphorical device—we are invited not only to reflect on the appearance of families past, but to actively take part in the “immediate/contemporary construction of family.” The viewer is no longer a passive onlooker but an active co-creator.
Photo source of the works: Provided by the artist
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