Yue Cheng CN
Sphere 3: The Island and Insulation
Video installation
Exhibition “ Solar Futures ”
October 30 through December 12, 2026
Wednesday through Saturday, 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
La Manufacture Gallery
Aix-en-Provence
Credits
With support from the Neuflize OBC Foundation Scholarship
This sculpture takes the form of a futuristic dome conceived as a habitat in a mycelial world. Through a living spherical ecosystem, the work unfolds an experimental microcosm where fiction, human survival, and organic beings intersect. It questions the limits of anthropocentrism and envisions new forms of coexistence between nature and technology, within bio-architectural structures inspired by prehistoric mycelia. The artist cultivates living fungi and plants within it and has designed a program that transforms the biological signals of the mycelia into synthetic sounds. In this ever-changing space, the boundaries between humans and non-humans blur, giving way to a hybrid future that blends the organic, the mechanical, and microelectronics.
Yue Cheng
Yue Cheng is an artist-researcher of Chinese origin who lives and works in France. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles, she is currently a doctoral student at Le Fresnoy – National Studio for Contemporary Arts, in collaboration with the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
His work is rooted in a reflection on contemporary ways of living in the Anthropocene era. Drawing on his experience of growing up in China amid rapid development, he explores the tensions between anthropocentrism, urbanization, and the ecological crisis. Through speculative ecosystems—an underground city, an artificial island, a sphere, a mycelial system—she explores the interconnections between phenomena that define modernity, such as consumer society, the persistence of revolutionary narratives, and changes in the urban landscape.
At the intersection of photography, video, sculpture, and digital hybridization, she has developed a poetic and forward-looking practice. His works create microcosms that explore themes of utopia, dreams, spectacle, and the relationships between human beings and their environment.
His work has been exhibited in France, China, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Greece.
