Ladder and Wall #

2022, Ceramics, 65 x 45 x15 cm.
Collected by Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation Collection

In Ladder and Wall, Yujie Zhou created a metaphorical ladder representing the use of a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to climb over the Great Firewall. In the spring of 2020, Zhou created a folder titled Censorship, where they began archiving a series of screenshots—images of posts that had either already been censored or were likely to be removed soon. These screenshots became the raw material for sculpting the ceramic work Ladder and Wall. Zhou printed the images, tore them into small fragments, and mixed the scraps with clay to make paper clay. While the image fragments are no longer visible in the final ceramic form, they remain a vital structural component of the ladder’s physical and conceptual construction.

Ladder and Wall, 2022

Ladder and Wall, Installation View at QWERTY, Solo Exhibition at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Finland, 2023
image credit: Milla Talassalo / Hippolyte