Herstory
Yumo Cheng (she/her/they/them), 成禹墨, is a filmmaker, theatremaker and artist currently living in Berlin. She dedicated herself to storytelling and performing after graduating in literary studies from the University of Zurich.
Yumo lives as life is an ongoing performance art. Her main practice is autonomous performance art in public space, uncurated and naturally taking place on the streets and in the community. Her works accurately capture those poignant moments in reality, condensing them into fables with humor and absurdity. Her works focus on the intersectional experiences of queer feminist, Asian immigrants, and trauma survivor. Her art practice is not only a survival methodology but also the armor in the fierce battle against the Great censorship and social norms. Yumo uses her works to articulate the unspeakable, reanimate the forgotten, and make the ignored visible. Her works have been selected by numerous international film festivals, and her performances have been showcased in China, Switzerland, Finland, France, Germany, Kenya and Rwanda.
Yumo Cheng is a filmmaker and artist based in Berlin.
She was born and raised in Wuhan, China, a punk city, an oriental Chiago, a very "jianghu" jungle, which became known worldwide in a poisonously dramatic way a few years ago.
Growing up under strong controls and suffocating love, her memories of childhood and teenagehood are of a deformed middle finger, a slap after her 92-points grade, the lies about having blue hair, an extracurricular education institution called "Way to Peking University", a heated fight over dropping a painting class and the summer of 2012, when she didn't have to attend so many classes and watched over 200 classic films in two months.
During her Bachelor studies in Central China Normal University, 4 girls shared a room of 10 square-metres. 156 girls shared 6 showers. There was hot water for only 7 hours a day. It was a truly mono-communist, punk life. She explored erotics, and the pain and melancholia it caused in the underground art scene of Wuhan. She felt Erotics was the only way of freedom.
After completing her studies in literature and film at the University of Zurich, she was deported by the Swiss immigration authorities. With the help of her alliance, she managed to move to Berlin.
Experiencing an identity crisis, she found herself as a legal alien, a walking target of white men's education, "Miss Virus", "Lady Corona", an object of the gaze, and a madam butterfly. She often felt that she was losing her language and suffering from aphasia. She felt so gagged all the time. With the unstoppable urge to shout out and the force to resist, she began to conceptualise her experiences through performance art, photography, films and objects making. Sincen, she can breath better.
While in China, her artistic practice was motivated by burgeoning creativity and the quest for freedom. Then after coming to Europe, being a queer immigrant, her art is the only way for her to better survive in her reality.
Yumo is a survivor of many different kinds of violence. She has made up her mind that she will never again be a slave to her family, to men, to the White, to the Leviathan. She is trying.
BIO
Education：
09/2019-07/2021 Master of Arts, University of Zürich: Literary Studies
09/2015-06/2019 Bachelor of Arts, Central China Normal University
(one of Chinese “985” “211” universities): English Literature
Curatorial Experience
2022- New Gen Berlin Film Festival
2021-2023 Filmstelle, VSETH/VSUZH
Awards & Residencies
2024 Mov(i)ement, Doc Impact Lab, Ethonkino Film Festival, CH
2023 Asian Performing Artists Lab@AmnAsia.6, Berlin, DE
2023 Best Short Film, "Sewing Souls", Global Science Film Festival, CH
2021 Jury Price, "Meaningful Struggle", Scifilmit, Zurich, CH
2021 Second Price, A Series of Humanistic Thinking During COVID-19 Pandemic, StuCon, UZH, CH
Exihibitions, Performance & Filmfestivals
2024 Renens Palace: The Blooming Red Flower on my Butt, Keller 62, Zurich, CH
2024 Suspicious Stain, Helsinki Theater Acedemy, Fi
2024 Grand Gay Wedding, Espace 3353, Geneva, CH
2024 Le Fesses-tival. Geneva, CH
2024 “Agnus Dei”, Societätstheater Dresden, Dresden, DE
2024 “Green House”, Synnika, Frankfurt am Main, DE
2024 Alien without Extraordinary Ability, DOMiD | Documentation Center and Museum of Migration in Germany, Cologne, DE
2023 Contemporary Chinese Queer Art, Shedhalle, Zurich, CH
2023 Little whorehouse de Chinoise, Porny Days, Zurich
2023 Alien without Extraordinary Ability, Ringtheater, Berlin, DE
2023 Grand Gay Wedding, 706, Berlin, DE
2023 Grand Gay Wedding, Synnika, Frankfurt am Main, DE
2022 „Grand Gay Wedding", Material, Zürich, CH
2022 PERFORM| VARI | ÉTE, Zentralwaescherei, Zuerich, CH
2022 Sex - Eine Ausstellung rund um Sex, Toni Areal, Zürich, CH
2022 Devine Feminity, Galerie Shugen, Shanghai, CN
Publications
04/2020 Visual Essay: Prostitute in Victorian Age, Self-produced, SwitchTube
02/2020 Visual Essay: Hitchcock Haunts Palma, Self-produced, SwitchTube
12/2019 Visual Essay: Hitchcock’s Phlias, Self-produced, SwitchTube
09/2018 “The Origin of Others — A Dialogue between Race and Culture”,
Folk Story, ISSN1005-3948; CN22-1035/I
05/2018 Film The Myrtle on the Hill, Self-produced, CCNU Culture Club
08/2017 “Reading Yukio Mishima”, Zhi Japan, ISBN978-7-5086-7751-4, (China’s most famous magazine on Japanese culture)