Tracing circles with her suitcase, Yuge mourns seasons of separation from family

The art of Yuge Zhou ‘addresses rootedness, longing and transient encounters across constructed or natural spaces’. As such, Moon Drawings (2020-22) is an outlier in her body of work, as it features only one person – Zhou herself – captured within its frames. Still, the unusually autobiographical piece, which Zhou, who was born in China and is now based in Chicago, conceived of while being unable to visit her family in Beijing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, is very much rooted in human connection; in particular, the longing its absence can create.

Inspired by the traditional Chinese belief that the full moon symbolises family reunion, Zhou filmed herself from above dragging a suitcase in circular patterns to, in her words, ‘create circular mantras suspended in a time of waiting’. This excerpted version of the work documents Zhou performing this ritual across three winters in a snowy parking lot near her Chicago apartment building, and two summers on the shores of Lake Michigan. While each scene features liminal lighting and the dreamlike image of Zhou carving these patterns against the resistance of the ground, small differences signal the passage of time across seasons. Exclusive to Aeon, this version of Moon Drawings features an ambient score by the US composer William Pearson, which evokes both the environmental and emotional landscape of each scene.