When My Family Becomes My Actors

When My Family Becomes My Actors places moving image at the centre of the exhibition. Presented at Buskerud Kunstsenter, the exhibition premieres a documentary edit developed from Whispers in the Belly, focusing on the artist’s parents and sister after they became performers within the work. The film follows how they negotiate acting, intimacy and personal boundaries, and what happens when performance begins to touch the real dynamics of family life.

Alongside this new documentary chapter, Whispers in the Belly will also be presented in an exhibition/screening format, allowing viewers to move between the finished work and the process of its making. Together, the works position the family not only as subject matter, but also as collaborators, witnesses and emotional participants within the artwork’s formation.

In this exhibition, hemorrhoids return more explicitly to the centre of the work — not simply as an embarrassing family condition or a source of humour, but as a structural symptom through which shame, care labour and silence are organised. Rather than forcing resolution, the exhibition keeps these tensions visible in their everyday rhythm and density.

Part of Hemorrhoid Loans, a 2026 exhibition series across Oslo, Drammen and Taiwan, this exhibition is developed from The Piles We Carry, first presented at UKS, Oslo, in 2025.

Bio:
Yu Shuk Pui Bobby is a visual artist and filmmaker based between Hong Kong and Oslo. Working across moving image, installation, sculpture and performance, she explores intimate relationships and collaborations through body politics, Asian femininity, migration and the emotional labour of family life. Her works often begin with overlooked details of everyday experience — a medical condition, a shared meal, a domestic object — and expand into speculative and affective narratives about care, shame and healing.

Yu holds a BA from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, and an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her recent projects include the long-term research series Genetic Salon, which examines human genetic engineering and perceptions of gender, body and identity through speculative fiction, and Hemorrhoid Loans, a 2026 exhibition series developed from The Piles We Carry (UKS, Oslo, 2025), using a shared family ailment to reflect on intergenerational trauma, humour and soft forms of resistance. She often collaborates with non-professional performers, family members and friends, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction.

Her work has been shown at Para Site (Hong Kong), Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), UKS – Young Artists’ Society (Oslo), and other artist-run and film platforms across Europe and Asia. She is the founder of YOU YU Studio AS and received the Best Director Award at the 17th Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival in Hong Kong.

Image: When My Family Becomes My Actors. Courtesy of the artist.