Yue Yu is an independent curator and art historian currently based in Helsinki, after having lived and worked in Paris, Osaka, Tokyo, and Hangzhou. 

Understanding ‘otherness’ is at the center of her research and curatorial practice, which are inspired by horizontal art history as an alternative narrative to the hierarchical power dynamics inherent in center/periphery-based models. With her own experiences living and working in different cities around the world, fluent in Chinese, Japanese, French and English, Yue is committed to fostering meaningful conversations in the international art community. Her concern for underrepresented artistic scenes led her to deliver a talk at the international conference “Art in the Periphery” in Lisbon in 2019 and attend a curatorial residency at Easttopics in Budapest in 2022. She also organized an international conference on artistic exchanges between East and West at L'École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 2023. Her recent exhibition project “Unbearable Lightness of Being“ brings together Helsinki-based and Manchester-based artists in a dynamic exploration of textiles within contemporary art.

Yue holds a Ph.D. in Art History (2023, University of Lille & Ecole du Louvre, France), MA degrees in Aesthetics (2015, University of Osaka, Japan) and Comparative Literature (2017, Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris 3, France), as well as a BA degree in Chinese Literature and Theatre Studies (2011, Nanjing University, China). She is also a research fellow at the University of Tokyo for Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies in 2019.