photo of body of water sparkling in sunlight

detail of can u be nostalgic for something u dont remember?, huiyin zhou

辫 (biān) / 彼岸 (bǐ àn)

— “for those of us who live at the shoreline”(Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival)

August 1 - September 28, 2025

 辫 (biān) / 彼岸 (bǐ àn) brings reflections on memory, queer kinship, immigration, and familial history to the forefront through a mixed-media site-specific installation including photos, writing, collage, and family archives.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Artist Statement

“辫(biān)” means to braid. “彼岸(bǐ àn)” literally translates as “the shore across,” but in Buddhism it also means another world — one reached through transcendence. The two words share the same syllables in Chinese, but differ in tone and meaning. The latter almost inhales a pause — in between — like the crossing itself: the shore, the arrival/ departure, the liminal space. That moment of transcendental suspension, like a plane pausing briefly on the runway between landing and takeoff. Both wor(l)ds gesture toward transformation through encounters. Like the act of grafting in agriculture, this exhibition, rather than telling, wants to meet.

Through photography, family archives, ephemera, writing, collage, installation, and participatory art, 辫(biān) /彼岸(bǐ àn)embraces both the artists and their works as at once the shore and the water. The standing shores — individual legacies of (im)migration and wars their families endured — are braided by tender waters: the intimacy and care they share as collaborators and chosen family.

Here, the boundary between land and water is not fixed. The shoreline is never static nor linear, but cared with fluidity: wave, water, crossing, merging. When we look closely, it touches our feet — tickling, grounding. When we gaze from afar, it becomes the horizon. A space of transcendence. Of becoming.

huiyin zhou + Laura Dudu

photo of hand reaching towards a dark green pond
Laura Dudu, from born of what is still becoming
photo of woman with red and black hair looking towards an orange-red bus
huiyin zhou & Laura Dudu, photo from i look at my body and then i see u
be-twined

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hú-tu (Laura 嘟嘟 & huiyin zhou) is an artist duo with backgrounds in social practice and anthropology, working across moving image, photography, performance, and collaborative writing.

Since 2020, huiyin and Laura have collaborated on over 40 performances, workshops, and exhibitions exploring diasporic queer identity, family memory, generational trauma, and collective grief through ritualistic and community-centered processes.

Dedicated to multidisciplinary art and transnational organizing, Laura and huiyin co-founded and co-direct the Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草. They also facilitate the Survivors Anchoring Art Narrative Garden (SAANG Project 春风吹), a co-creative, imaginative land for sexual and racial abuse survivors. Working with material, affective, residual, and conceptual presences, their works speak on/into the potential of intimate knowledge production.


huiyin and Laura have been awarded residencies at Bunker Projects, Experimental Media Performance Lab (xMPL), Durham Art Guild, BRIClab, Pedantic Arts, and Feminist Incubator. Their work has received support from BRIC, Raleigh Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Queens Art Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Asian American Arts Alliance, Durham Arts Council, and beyond.

photo of huiyin zhou and Laura Dudu
photo by Toby Tenenbaum