Radicalness in Suspension: From ‘Ge Yu Lu’ to Ge Yulu

From 2013 to 2017, migrant artist Ge Yulu (葛宇路, b. 1990) carried out his private project Ge Yu Lu (葛宇路), secretly installing a street sign bearing his name on an unnamed road in the chaotic bustle of Beijing, as well as embedding the name in digital maps such as those of Gaode (高德) and Baidu (百度), which provide real-time navigation for everyday use. This was possible because in Chinese, lu (路), the final character in Ge’s name, also means ‘road’. As the street was seamlessly transformed into ‘his own’, Ge developed an emotional connection to the people who passed along it each day. He often returned to the site, watching and wondering what might unfold on ‘his road’. Once, a drunk man stumbled out of a luxury Lamborghini, vomiting and crying like a desperate child on a dark, frozen night. The road, impartial and unassuming, bore the mundane realities of life—each passer-by’s joy and sorrow—among Beijing’s rigid and complex class hierarchy.

When the media began uncovering and reporting Ge’s mischievous act in June 2017, headlines announced: ‘You can hardly afford to buy a unit in Beijing, but you can have a road of your own’ (Ge and Zhu 2021). Ge gained instant fame—or notoriety. Even China Central Television (CCTV), one of the Chinese Government’s official and most orthodox mouthpieces, solemnly interviewed him, further amplifying the absurdity surrounding the incident. Despite a huge number of netizens calling for the street to retain the name ‘Ge Yu Road’ and declaring it one of the best performances in recent Chinese art—precisely because it showed the public that this was a form of art—city authorities insisted on removing the seemingly ordinary street sign. Their intervention only heightened the effect of Ge’s work, making it an even more powerful example of site-specific, socially engaged art. On 13 July 2017, a crowd of journalists witnessed the end of Ge Yu Lu in just three minutes; it was immediately renamed ‘Baiziwannanyi Road’ (百子湾南一路).

From Best Performance to Punishment

In August 2017, shortly after the media frenzy, Weilin Xu, a junior scholar researching urbanisation at Peking University, visited the Apple Residential Community, a luxury apartment and office complex where Ge Yu Lu had once been installed. At the time, the average listed price for a previously owned unit in the complex was RMB93,500 per square metre (approximately US$14,500 per square metre). Xu conducted a survey among residents to gauge their attitudes towards the naming and renaming of ‘Ge Yu Road’. She asked: ‘Do you think Ge’s naming practice should be praised or condemned, and why?’ and ‘Do you think it was necessary for officials to rename “Ge Yu Road”, and why?’ (Xu 2021).

The responses revealed mostly nuanced or ambivalent views. Many residents believed Ge’s naming act was both praiseworthy and worthy of criticism. Twelve people supported Ge’s behaviour and opposed the renaming; nine strongly disagreed with the authorities’ decision; another nine thought society should tolerate Ge’s intervention and preserve his work for the general public. Sixteen residents found the new name, ‘Baiziwannanyi Road’, more appropriate and conventional, while the remaining respondents considered both names acceptable. According to the interviews, Ge’s actions were lauded for being innovative, insightful, and convenient to everyday life, while also exposing local government negligence. However, some interviewees argued that any moral judgement hinged on the ‘illegality’ of Ge’s approach. One noted that although the act was creative and provocative, it violated state regulations and should not be excused as art. ‘If everyone names roads after themselves,’ the respondent warned, ‘it would lead to disorder in the city’s toponymic landscape’ (Xu 2021).

Although the local council had confiscated—or forcibly ‘collected’—Ge’s road sign, the controversial ‘masterpiece’, a copy of Ge Yu Lu, was formally exhibited at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum (CAFAM) during its 2017 annual graduation show as Ge’s graduation work. In fact, his signature project had begun well before he enrolled at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) as a postgraduate student in experimental art in 2014. Ge completed his undergraduate education at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan, his hometown.

One day during his undergraduate years, Ge was helping a teacher tally how many students wanted to purchase a textbook. He wrote his name first on the classroom blackboard. The next student didn’t write their own name but simply added ‘×2’ after Ge’s name. This was followed by a growing sequence: ‘×3’, ‘×4’, ‘×5’, ‘×6’ … The collective mimicry unsettled Ge. He felt both embarrassed and intrigued: why did everyone choose to follow rather than assert their individuality by writing their own names? In response to this unconscious group behaviour, Ge decided to parody it. That weekend, he bought cans of spray paint and began doodling his name along the road to school. A street pedlar riding a fruit cart stopped him and asked, ‘Is this road called “Ge Yu Lu”?’ (Chen 2021). That unexpected encounter would later inspire the full realisation of Ge Yu Lu.

Ge’s street art featuring his ‘big names’ inevitably irritated the school authorities. They interrogated him and ordered him to erase the graffiti from the road, as it was a public space. Ge retorted: ‘There are so many crappy advertisements on the wall and everywhere—why doesn’t anyone get annoyed?’ (Chen 2021). Fortunately, the incident taught him an important lesson: the context in which he displayed his name—and doing so in a strategically undetectable way—was crucial. He began experimenting with paper road signs, pasting them onto walls instead.

In 2013, Ge travelled to Beijing to sit the national entrance examinations (including English and politics) required for a master’s degree at CAFA. He failed that year but chose to remain in Beijing, taking part-time jobs while preparing to retake the exams. At the same time, he continued distributing his name throughout the city to keep his project alive. Consulting digital maps, he searched for unnamed roads, selected one, and posted his name on the wall. Some signs were removed on the same day; others remained undetected for days or weeks. Only one—installed on an actual road sign—survived. It eventually became Ge Yu Lu, the work that made Ge Yulu a renowned artist (Chen 2021).

All those ‘crappy advertisements on the wall and everywhere’ also prompted his 2014 work Chatting about Art. In this project, Ge printed mock advertisements offering a service: anyone who called the number could talk with him about art. Pasted across urban surfaces in the style of the unsightly ads he mimicked, these posters attracted a wide range of callers. Their responses revealed the jarring, often absurd dissonance between art—commonly understood as elite or rarefied—and the everyday perspectives of people from diverse class backgrounds.

However, on 29 July 2017, CAFA authorities announced an official punishment against Ge for what they described as an egregious violation of school regulations. It was because Ge produced another provocative artwork: he installed a dildo atop the campus flagpole. The piece was quickly embraced by excited netizens, who dubbed it Fucking Great to Bang the Sky (屌炸天) or The Rise of China (中华崛起) (Anonymous 2019b). The official CAFA statement was vague, providing no details about when or how Ge had violated school rules.

In a casual phone call, Ge later told me that he had climbed the flagpole alone before dawn, mounted the sex toy, and left it there until it was discovered. He accepted the punishment and subsequent investigation by national security officers for several reasons. First, his act could be seen as a deliberate provocation against China’s official education system. Second, placing the object on the flagpole could be deemed a violation of the National Flag Law. Third, according to school authorities, Ge’s soaring popularity risked misleading the younger generation—encouraging them to become impetuous, superficial, and to seek shortcuts to success and instant fame.

The punishment Ge ‘deserved’ upon graduating undoubtedly impacted his life and career trajectory. While he was under investigation by authorities, he was socially ostracised. For two months, few CAFA classmates spoke to him. Even teachers with whom he had once been close reduced their interactions to distant nods in the café; no-one wanted to become entangled in the controversy. After the media report about him went viral, some individuals even followed a food deliveryman to locate his residence. During this period, he compulsively monitored online discussions about himself, which were a chaotic mix of insults and praise. He was sleeping little more than two hours a night, unable to work, mentally spiralling. Pushed to his limits, he entered a state of deep psychological distress (Anonymous 2019b).

These events thrust him into the harsh glare of public opinion. Gradually, the range of responses made him sense that society was shifting: ‘Values are becoming increasingly uniform, with boundaries drawn more clearly than ever’ (Anonymous 2019b). He spent the following year largely in hiding at home with his anxious parents, recovering from his ‘lucky notoriety’. In the Curriculum Vitae he sent me in 2020, he is listed as graduating from CAFA after three years of study, receiving a certificate in 2018 rather than a master’s in 2017. Notably, in his artist portfolio, Fucking Great to Bang the Sky, despite its fame, is conspicuously absent.

Ge had once been someone who disregarded social rules and acted with focused confidence. In his own words, he treated public space—the external world—as though it were his own backyard (Anonymous 2019b). This perspective made him indifferent to the boundary between private and public spaces, and oblivious to social and political conventions. However, after his punishment, each time a new idea crossed his mind, he found himself asking: ‘Can I do it?’ ‘Is this the right way to do it?’ ‘Will it cause problems or lead to trouble?’ In the process of such self-questioning, potential creations dissolved inside him (Anonymous 2019b). Ge had been disciplined; he now understood that practising self-censorship had become a necessity.

From Society to Museum

As a migrant in Beijing, Ge faced further setbacks when a university in the city—the name of which he refuses to disclose—cancelled his contract due to the punishment. This came despite his having undergone several rounds of tests and interviews over more than six months and receiving an oral offer. As a result, he was unable to secure a danwei (单位, ‘work unit’)—a key requirement for affiliation with the system and registering a Beijing hukou (户口, ‘household registration’), which is essential to work and live in the city as a legal resident.

In 2017, following the eviction of artist communities from Heiqiao (黑桥)—an urban village that had long served as a hub for artists and art school graduates—Ge was forced to relocate. He moved to Yanjiao (燕郊), a satellite town of Beijing but governed by Hebei Province. There, he rented a modest two-bedroom unit for RMB1,600 per month (about US$220) (Wang 2020).

Despite his rising public profile, Ge remained notably aloof from commercial ventures, often responding to media attention and offers with a reserved, even ascetic, attitude towards money. In one instance, he told me, a businessman approached him with a proposal to mass-produce 500 replicas of the now-iconic street sign bearing Ge’s name, pricing each at RMB10,000 (US$1,400). Confident of the commercial potential, the businessman expected collaboration, but Ge rejected the idea outright. This refusal not only shielded him from market exploitation but also helped cultivate what singer Patti Smith once called a ‘good name’—a reputation grounded in integrity rather than profit, and something to which many Chinese artists today openly aspire.

Following the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan and the citywide lockdown in early 2020, Ge faced yet more unexpected adversity—this time due to his origins. Although he held a Beijing ID card obtained while studying at CAFA, it included a sequence of unique and permanent numbers indicating his place of origin, which was Wuhan (Wang 2020). As fear and suspicion spread, Wuhan migrants—regardless of their infection status—became targets of stigma, facing a form of intra-ethnic racism across China.

To cross the border into Beijing’s suburbs, Ge jokingly considered purchasing a canoe with a paddle online and launching an art project to ‘smuggle himself in’ via a river (though he never carried it out). Eventually, he found an alternative by relocating to Songzhuang (宋庄), an artist enclave on the outskirts of Beijing. Though technically still part of the municipality, Songzhuang was far from the city centre, but Ge continued to face precarity and the threat of expulsion there (Strafella 2024). His monthly rent for a two-bedroom unit rose to RMB2,500 (US$350) (Wang 2021).

Social anthropologist Xiang Biao once observed that, since China’s market-oriented social reform, hukou has become a significant issue, primarily when migrants seek to settle permanently in cities and require access to formal education for their children, public sector employment, or land and homeownership (Xiang 2005: x). While each danwei may no longer function as comprehensively as in the past, many still maintain their own housing, childcare, schools, clinics, shops, canteens, and postal services. As a result, the influence of a danwei on the life of an individual—and even a family—remains substantial (Zhang and Chai 2014: 80), especially for young migrants struggling to put down roots and escape uncertainty. From one’s hometown to Beijing, ‘transient migration’ is meant to be ‘short-lived, ephemeral, leaving minimal marks in the local society’ (Xiang 2017: 3). Thus, ‘little energy is invested in systemic changes here and now, as people keep moving without an end in sight’ (Xiang 2021: 234). The condition, Xiang argues, is both ‘structurally compelled’ and ‘self-inflicted’, which partly explains ‘why we see tremendous entrepreneurial energy in daily life in China but few bottom-up initiatives for social and political change’ (Xiang 2021: 234).

Ge once considered leaving China but changed his mind after participating in art residencies in South Korea, Thailand, and Austria in 2018 and 2019. The international exposure made him realise that his artistic practice depends deeply on China’s social, political, and institutional context. Outside China, his works were often simplified as acts of ‘civic protest’ or expressions of a ‘young Chinese dissident’ (Gao 2017)—a framing that disappointed him, as he simply wished to be known as an ‘artist’. One of his works, Eye Contact, was quickly embraced by international audiences. To create it in 2016, Ge wandered through Beijing in search of a suitable CCTV camera in a public space. Once he found one, he stared into it until the operator came out to confront him. Ge then offered a bribe in exchange for the footage in which his face appeared. The resulting work gives the impression of Ge sharing an intimate gaze not with an adversary, but with a kind of ‘big brother’. In Ge’s own words in an interview with me: ‘That makes me feel romantic.’

Thanks to being radically tamed, Ge now views some intentionally confrontational artworks as fragile; once the targets or contexts they challenge disappear, their meaning can wither away. As a result, he rhetorically declares a preference for being ‘resistant’, with dark humour, and takes the necessity of being ‘compromised’ for granted. Once an emerging avant-garde figure who gained sudden attention from and brought excitement to the art world, Ge’s turn towards ‘mild resistance’ has led some radical peers to view him as ‘slippery’, ‘idolised’, and ‘prematurely established’ (Anonymous 2021).

Beginning in 2018, Ge shifted from unpredictable, provocative interventions to more thoughtful, pleasing, and entertaining engagements within art institutions. In many cases, institutions welcomed these standardised performances—commissioning and permitting them to showcase their openness, generosity, and self-critical stance. In this context, Ge was afforded the privilege of being a ‘silly artist’ or prankster—someone who could prod institutional boundaries, disturb surface-level harmony, and make a slightly different sound without truly threatening the system.

In Cost Performance (2018), Ge audited the accounts of an art space and presented the work at Taikang Space. He presented the exhibition’s itemised spending on a live scrolling screen, revealing a stark discrepancy between the institution’s budget (RMB183,550; US$28,500) and real expenditure (RMB 44,021.50; US$7,000). While institutions typically invite artists and organise exhibitions, in China, it is often the artists who must meet the costs—submitting a series of invoices to later be reimbursed. The claims process—gathering eligible receipts, sorting paperwork, filling out forms, and preparing a patient smile—can be exhausting, tedious, and needlessly complex. Some artists eventually give up. This widespread experience has sparked a bitter joke: ‘exhibition-made poverty’ (展览致贫). Ge designed Cost Performance to expose this structural inequity and successfully pressured the institution to promptly reimburse a group of artists during the show. Despite this, the work remained a sanctioned installation or performance—an institutional collaboration. The real-world dynamics, of course, are far more difficult to change.

Also in 2018, during the scorching summer in Guangzhou, Ge carried out a commissioned work titled Cool, hosted by Fei Museum. The performance cast him in the role of a ‘privileged prick’ who continuously hassled museum staff and wasted resources in the name of art. For this 24-hour piece, Ge instructed the staff to ensure that he did not sweat—not once. The staff were obliged to follow the artist’s orders, no matter how absurd the request or how difficult the logistics, turning the performance into a satire of authority, privilege, and institutional compliance.

Ge arrived in Guangzhou from Beijing wearing thick makeup and formal business attire, playing the part of an important person—a parody of state officials or corporate elites. Museum staff and volunteers picked him up at the airport and escorted him around the city: visiting the museum, delivering a public speech, and attending parties. To fulfil his command that he ‘could not produce a bead of sweat’, a support team always surrounded him with a large umbrella, a generator, electric fans, and blocks of ice. He ate a warm lunch in an icehouse and was driven into the museum in a car packed with ice. The entire project was livestreamed on popular social media platforms and projected on three giant screens in the museum’s main hall.

From late 2020 to early 2021, Ge collaborated again with Fei Museum, this time proposing a six-month project in which he would serve as an alternative staff member. The idea was to reward each museum employee with a one-week holiday, during which Ge would take over their duties. He documented his daily work and later exhibited the records in both solo and group shows. His growing disenchantment with the museum—as part of a culture industry that produces elitist spectacles—was captured in the headline: ‘Even artist Ge Yulu was trapped inside the system like an average corporate slave’ (Yao 2021).

In an interview, Ge remarked: ‘The art system is so good at weaving fantasy, and the institutions use this skill to disguise practical and realistic problems’ (Yao 2021). He also organised public conversations with young art professionals to discuss the labour conditions behind these ‘fantastic’ institutions. Many of the idealistic youth, he noted, had once been ‘enchanted’ by the fantasy that drew them into the system, only to become ‘institutional slaves’. Eventually, many dropped out after being confronted with what Ge called the ‘bloody truth’ (Yao 2021).

An Artistic Suicide?

The significance of Ge’s institutional critique has often been measured against his earlier socially engaged practices. When his gallery, Beijing Commune, presented his second solo show, This One is a Painting, So is That One (一幅是画, 另一幅也是画), in 2021, Ge abandoned his signature performance art in favour of exhibiting about 30 of his miniature paintings, each priced between RMB20,000 and RMB30,000 (US$3,100–4,700). He described the act as an ‘artistic suicide’ (艺术自杀) because, as he openly admitted, he had created the works for money (Liu 2021).

Founded in 2005 in the Beijing 798 Art District, Beijing Commune is a commercial gallery known for representing some of the most expensive and internationally recognised Chinese artists, including Zhang Xiaogang, Richard Deacon, Yin Xiuzhen, and Song Dong (Ge’s former professor/supervisor at CAFA). It was established by literary theorist Leng Lin, who was formally affiliated with the Institute of Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and was handpicked by the influential American art dealer Arne Glimcher, founder of Pace Gallery, to launch Pace Beijing (2008–19) in 798 (Anonymous 2019a). Beijing Commune’s decision to represent a performance artist such as Ge appears, at first glance, to run counter to its market-oriented logic.

Rendered in a standard realist style, Ge’s paintings showcased the foundational techniques required of high school students and adult candidates preparing for entrance exams to art schools in China. The irony embedded in the exhibition was pointed: many of China’s most celebrated—and expensive—painters shared this same mechanical, repetitive training, rooted in awkward imitation. Through these works, Ge sought to evoke the collective trauma of Chinese art education. Yet, the controversy surrounding his so-called ‘artistic suicide’ stemmed from his choice of medium and form. As Ge himself acknowledged, ‘Paintings are undoubtedly much easier to sell than conceptual performances and videos’ (Liu 2021). By being so transparent about his financial motivations, Ge was labelled ‘sophisticated’, ‘pragmatic’, ‘money-driven’, and even ‘boring’ (Anonymous 2021). His critics began to question the sustainability of his talent. For Ge, however, this shift marked a return—not to Ge Yu Lu the artwork, but to the real Ge Yulu.

Cover Image: Ge Yulu, Ge Yu Lu, 2013–17. Source: China Digital Times.

References

Anonymous. 2019a. ‘别了,佩斯北京 [Farewell, Pace Beijing!].’ 荐见美学 [Jianjian Arts], 9 July. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/taIroMmkhuiHC6Oc_uK44w.

Anonymous. 2019b. ‘过气网红葛宇路 [Ge Yulu: An Outdated Internet Influencer].’ 睿士中文 [Elle Man China], 24 September. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Kbf2fP_6ed8zCBXJyKAG-Q.

Anonymous. 2021. ‘葛宇路花钱批评葛宇路 [Ge Yulu Hires Critics to Criticise Ge Yulu].’ 手机玩我 [Cell Phone Plays Me], 13 July. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DFdzqmoTQRbkheeLWg-vyg.

Chen, Lu 陈璐. 2021. ‘葛宇路: 抱着石头去上课 [Ge Yulu: Going to School Carrying a Stone].’ 三联生活周刊 [Sanlian Lifeweek], 22 April. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yj9_72e_iVKqjeWagdpp5Q.

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