ZHU, Bruno
The September Issue

Bruno Zhu’s The September Issue is an artists’ book in the form of an oversized wall calendar, depicting the artist’s mother in a series of Chinese glamour photoshoots. 

First presented as a prototype edition in Zhu’s 2015 exhibition New Arrivals at FOAM Amsterdam, the project constitutes an early example of the artist’s interest in working with family members, using their images and his own to reassess and reimagine nuclear familial archetypes, approaching them, in his own words, as “a set of characters or agents that can reconstruct a scene, that exists halfway between a symbolic plane and an affective one.”

The sequence in The September Issue begins on September 1972—the month and year of the artist’s mother’s birth, the year of the Mouse—and continues on a twelve-year cycle, spanning 132 years. Across each page, she is presented anew, surrounded by messages of love and longing: a new outfit, a new scenario, a new moment—ever beautiful, ever hopeful. [publishers’ note]

*Coil-bound oversized artist book with foiled covers – 48 x 34 cm – 24 pages.

** Special launch price !! **

Published by 5b, 2024
Artists' Books