What others pass over becomes a place to begin.
A practice shaped by quiet contradictions, overlooked details, and questions that resist a single discipline.
Read the approachPORTFOLIO / 2026
01 / 08 ARRIVAL
ARTIST · STUDENT · OBSERVER
I notice what
the room forgets.
Terrence Yu works across installation, photography, music, and research—following quiet details until they open into questions of home, identity, memory, and belonging.
AN ARTIST IN PROGRESSINSTALLATION · IMAGE · SOUND
A PRACTICE IN FIVE MOVEMENTS
Five ways
of looking.
The work moves outward from a quiet act: staying with what is easy to overlook.
01—05 / AN INDEX
Stable Individual
An installation about home, weight, care, and the labor of making stability visible.
Enter the case study
Photography & moving image
A growing visual archive that follows atmosphere, distance, interruption, and the psychology of looking.
Open the archiveMusic made inside a circle of friends.
Independent production, writing, recording, and mixing turn private memories into songs that can travel.
Hear the releases
Images that move outward.
Photography Club and the developing Habitat for Humanity project turn image-making into a community act.
See community work02
ABOUT / 关于
Observation is not passive.
It is a way of staying with a question.
My work begins with small contradictions: a structure meant to feel permanent that cannot hold its own weight; a home that comforts and confines; a pulse that can become a signal. I use material, image, sound, and story to examine how people build stability.
Psychology, history, and sociology give me different ways to ask why an object—or a person—carries meaning. Art lets me keep the answer open long enough to notice what a single discipline might miss.
03
SELECTED WORKS
A developing archive
INSTALLATION · YEAR-LONG STUDY
Stable
Individual
A structure about the feeling of home—and the uneasy labor of making stability visible.
The project began in concrete: a material associated with permanence. But its weight made the work unstable. The failure became the turning point. In the final installation, a fabric-covered upper surface sits above an exposed, layered base; a transparent chamber concentrates light and throws it outward as a circular signal.
MATERIAL AS ARGUMENT
Select a material to trace the work’s evolution.
Fabric + lightMAKING / 过程
Stability,
assembled.
Twelve selected moments trace the work from a question on paper to its first dark-room test. Select a stage to inspect the build.
CONCEPTQuestions first
A research page connects house, self, belonging, and disconnection before the materials are fixed.
LIGHT / SURFACE / STRUCTURE
Drag or scroll to move through the installation.
Transparent planes multiply a concentrated source into reflections and flare.
Soft fabric, hard edges, masonry, timber, and hanging elements remain in tension.
The work extends beyond its body: light lands elsewhere in the room.
MOVING VIEW / 00:40
Circling the work.
The camera moves from the distant signal toward the reflective chamber, then down across the exposed support. The shifting viewpoint makes light—not a single object—the connective material.
DOCUMENTATION FILM · 2026
MOTIF / 04
A heartbeat
as lighthouse.
Within the work, the heartbeat becomes a guiding signal: intimate but outward-facing, fragile but repetitive. It asks whether stability is a fixed place or a rhythm we learn to return to.
05 / PHOTOGRAPHY + MOVING IMAGE
Peripheral
Vision.
A visual journal of city light, architecture, transit, weather, and the small encounters that usually pass without being held.
38 SHORT STUDIESDouyin / 抖音
01/ 38
VISUAL NOTEAfter office hours
Moving-image study from Terrence’s ongoing personal archive.
STILL PHOTOGRAPHY / 持续更新
This section is designed to grow. Future photographs will join the moving-image archive as a separate, edited sequence.
06 / MUSIC PRODUCTION
Songs for a
small circle.
With Jerry and Austin, I build songs from beats purchased online: writing lyrics, recording voices, shaping arrangements, and mixing the final tracks. Jerry and I most often work behind the scenes as producers, while all three of us move between writing and performance.
Some songs begin as experiments. Others are written for the birthdays of friends we know well—private histories translated into something we can give back. Releasing the work on NetEase Cloud Music, and later Spotify, turned that small shared ritual into a public record.
01
NETEASE CLOUD MUSIC / 网易云音乐
Listen 02Selected production · 01
Writing, production, recording, and mixing with Jerry and Austin.
NETEASE CLOUD MUSIC / 网易云音乐
Listen 03Selected production · 02
An independent release made inside a close circle of friends.
SPOTIFY · INTERNATIONAL RELEASE
Listen 送给18岁的何翰文Domi
JerryCat, AT111, Wxrsn_ · 2:59 · production credit
What began as play is becoming a long-term practice. After college, I plan to pursue independent music production with greater focus.
07 / PERFORMANCE + MUSICAL THEATRE
Jane Eyre
Music and musical theatre as collaborative forms of atmosphere, character, and shared attention.
图像待补Performance and rehearsal documentationMOVE TO INSPECT · IMAGE FORTHCOMING
08
COMMUNITY / LEADERSHIP
Making images
move outward.
Terrence co-founded Photography Club with Kevin, beginning with photographing school sports and expanding the camera into a community tool.
He proposed and promoted a schoolwide photo-submission project, coordinating with the school’s charity-program teacher and art teacher. The developing project imagines student images as products whose proceeds would support Habitat for Humanity.
PROJECT STATUS — submissions and development ongoing