Cultured magazine profiles Cherrie Yu, a 30-year-old artist based in New York who grew up in Xi'an and Wuxi, China. Yu creates videos, performances, and prints that examine the relationship between everyday movement, dance, labor, and play. Notable works include 'Trisha and Homer' (2018), which juxtaposes a 1986 solo by choreographer Trisha Brown with the movements of a mopping maintenance worker, and 'Wrestling Study' (2017), a video reenacting a wrestling match in Chicago traffic. Yu cites mentor Bryan Saner, a woodworker and performer, as a key influence on their understanding of the laboring body as the dancing body.
This profile matters because it is part of Cultured's 2025 Young Artists list, an annual feature that spotlights emerging visual artists shaping contemporary practice. Yu's interdisciplinary approach—blending performance, video, and print while drawing from sports, choreography, and manual labor—reflects broader trends in art that collapse boundaries between high art and everyday life. The article also highlights the importance of mentorship and hands-on craft in artistic development, offering a window into how a new generation of artists thinks about process and collaboration.