"The 30 years between 1989 and 2019 have passed in a flash. When you are younger you always look towards to future, to what is next, but you rarely look back. In 2003 I made the decision to look back and to face my audience; for the past 15 years since Dialogue I had my back to the audience but now I want to meet their gaze. I felt that I must face their scrutiny, face the repercussions of those 1989 gunshots and face the past 15 years. 15 gunshots... from 1989 to 2003 is an artistic and personal turning point, a marker that divides the time from when I looked forward to when I looked backwards. The 15 years since 2003 have been a fraught and challenging period as I have sought to sift through my memories, examine my relationships and write my own history. My novel Dialogue emerged through this process, it was something I had to write, I had to speak for myself about the years since 1989. " - Xiao Lu from Ocula Magazine
Xiao Lu ( born 1962 in Hangzhou, China) . In 1984 she graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts High School, Beijing. In 1988 she graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts) in Hangzhou, China. From 1989 to 1997, Xiao Lu lived in Sydney, Australia and became an Australian citizen in 1997. She returned to China in 1997. From 1997 to 2020, she lived and worked in Beijing and Hangzhou, China. From 2021 to now, Xiao Lu lives and works in Sydney, Australia.
Xiao Lu works with performance, installation and other art forms, but she is most known for her performance. Recent exhibitions and some major past exhibitions: "Framing the Revolution" Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, USA (2023); "China – The Past is Present" National Gallery of VIC, Australia (2022); "Sensitive Content" Unit London, UK (2022); "Empowerment" Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2022); "20th-Century Galleries Collection 1960s-2000" Art Gallery of NSW, Australia (2022); "Bald Girls- Chain Reaction" KUH Art Space, Dusseldorf, Germany (2022); "Stepping Out! Female Identities in Chinese Contemporary Art" Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway (2022); "The Realm of Existence: An exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art" Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, China (2021); “Democracies” TATE Liverpool, UK (2020); Solo show "Skew" 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Solo show "Xiao Lu: Impossible Dialogue” 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia (2019); “1970s - Present” MoMA, New York, USA (2019); “Collection Displays: Performer and Participant” TATE Modern, London, UK (2018); “Her Kind” Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing, China (2018); “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World” Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2017); “Wen Pulin Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art" Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2016); "Bald Girls" Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2012); "Image History Existence" National Art Museum, Beijing, China (2011); “New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art” UCCA, Beijing, China (2007); “China/Avant-Garde” National Art Museum, Beijing, China (1989)
Selected collections: Taiking Life, Beijing, China; Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing, China; MoMA, NY, USA; TATE Modern, London, UK; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia; National Gallery of VIC, Australia; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia.
Publication: The novel "Dialogue" (Edition in Chinese and English), and translated from Chinese by Archibald McKenzie. Hong Kong University Press 2010.