© 2026 DONGBAY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. LAST UPDATED 06.2026
DONGBAY (Yübo Xü) is an artist whose practice investigates the operational systems that organize contemporary life. Working across installation, sculpture, moving image, and long-term field research, he examines how infrastructure, architecture, institutions, and technological artifacts shape human behavior, spatial perception, and collective belief. He approaches these systems as active structures that continuously produce rituals, boundaries, and modes of participation.
His projects are developed through sustained observation, repeated spatial experiments, and site-based research. Industrial facilities, construction sites, transportation networks, sports infrastructures, and maintenance systems become both his research subjects and material vocabulary. His works extract the operational logic and reconstruct it into sculptural and spatial frameworks, where function, protocol, and symbolic meaning intersect.
Central to his practice is the development of Synthetic Totem and Operational Imaging — two interconnected bodies of research that investigate how contemporary societies generate new symbolic systems through industrial objects, infrastructural components, and everyday operations. These projects do not seek to revive lost traditions, but to understand how ritual, measurement, repetition, and belief continue to emerge within technologically mediated environments.
Dongbay constructs long-term research systems composed of installations, diagrams, modular sculptures, publications, and temporary interventions. His practice prioritizes methodology over spectacle and continuous investigation over fixed conclusions, treating each work as part of an evolving framework for reading the relationship between civilization, ecology, and the built environment.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026
Terra Incognita (Unknown Land) — Part II
Al-Tiba9 Gallery / Barcelona, Spain
Group Exhibition
RAI Collections Open Studio
RIZQ Art Initiative / Abu Dhabi, UAE
Group Exhibition
Oltre l’inchiostro: nuovi orizzonti della calligrafia cinese contemporanea
Bologna Municipal Art Collections / Palazzo d’Accursio / Bologna, Italy
Group Exhibition
ART CIRCLE Collection in Italy: 15 Years of the International Festival of Visual Arts
Kulturni Center Lojze Bratuž / Gorizia, Italy
Group Exhibition / Curated by Katarina Brešan
CONFLUence
Sifang Art Museum / Nanjing, China
Group Exhibition
2025
Art Circle & Urban Jungle
Pomnik Miru / Cerje, Nova Gorica–Gorizia, Slovenia
Group Exhibition
From Breath to the Dirt
1215 Gallery / Montréal, Canada
Group Exhibition
Art Circle
Villa Vipolže / Brda, Slovenia
Group Exhibition
Dwelling in the Ideal Land
OneArt Gallery / Beijing, China
Group Exhibition
2024
Untitled
Group Exhibition
Nike Jaya Center / Shanghai, China
On the List
ALL Space / Shanghai, China
Group Exhibition
Resample
K66 Art Space / Shanghai, China
Group Exhibition
2023
Traceable
Parkview Green Art Center / Beijing, China
Group Exhibition
De Wereld Wat Met Handvat Getembi lk?
798 CUBE / Beijing, China
Group Exhibition
The Trip of a Skin
Baimiao Center / Beijing, China
Group Exhibition
SELECTED RECOGNITION
2025 — Finalist, Arte Laguna Prize, 20th Edition
Installation and Sculpture Category / Venice, Italy
2025 — Al-Tiba9 Gallery Special Prize
Awarded through the Arte Laguna Prize / Barcelona, Spain
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2025 — “Synthetic Totems: Fragments of the Anthropocene”
Edge Effects, University of Wisconsin–Madison / Essay Publication / USA
2025 — “Interview | Beijing and Shanghai-based Artist Dongbay (Yübo Xü)”
Asian Art Contemporary / Online Interview
2024 — Carhartt WIP China
Online Interview / China
2023 — Umay Art Project
Artist Talk / 798 CUBE / Beijing, China
2022 — 4 Crimes to Individuation
Artist Book / Self-published / China
2021 — Good Night Press
Online Interview / China