Yi Gu

Yi Gu is an Associate Professor of modern and contemporary art and visual culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), with cross-appointments in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media and the Department of East Asian Studies. Her scholarly work centers on Asian visual culture, particularly China's artistic and photographic history from the early twentieth century to the present.

Her research interests include cold war visual culture, post-socialist art, Chinese photography history, contemporary photography in Asia, mass art and amateurism, and visual methodologies across disciplines. Gu's work is driven by examining the political ambitions and social functions of art, as well as the politics of aesthetics. Her recent research has focused on aesthetic capitalism and digital surveillance in China, leading to studies of the Digital Countryside initiative and CCP aesthetics anchored in agrarian imaginary.

Gu's publications reveal a consistent engagement with visual epistemology, particularly how Chinese artists and photographers have negotiated modernity, nation-building, and transnational influences. Her work spans from early twentieth-century open-air painting practices to contemporary digital visual culture, demonstrating how visual practices serve as critical sites for understanding China's social and political transformations.

As co-editor of the open-access academic journal Trans Asia Photography and convening member of the research project 'Alternative Collections and Digital Humanities: Twentieth-Century Chinese Art and Visual Culture,' Gu actively contributes to expanding the field of Asian visual studies through collaborative scholarly initiatives.

At UTSC, Gu teaches undergraduate courses on modern and contemporary Asian art, lens-based media in Asia, public art, and art and digital culture. Her scholarly approach combines art historical methods with visual culture studies, media theory, and cross-disciplinary perspectives to examine how visual practices shape and are shaped by political and social contexts in China and beyond.