Lei Yu
Slow Autonomy
‘Slow Autonomy’ plants fungi within urban cracks and on printed images of surveillance landscapes, proposing a decentralised ethics of symbiosis. Mycelium infiltrates the rigid geometry of the city, softening its edges and blurring the boundaries of power and order. Growing across both human bodies and photographic surfaces, it reimagines photography not as a tool of documentation, but as a living, organic interface. Through this process, ‘Slow Autonomy’ operates on both visual and material levels, allowing microbial infiltration to erode urban permanence and unsettle anthropocentric control. By staging subtle, damp interventions within concrete and image, the work rewrites the relationships between humans, cities, and more-than-human life, inviting viewers to inhabit a slower, porous temporality shaped by fungal persistence.
Sharon Huang • Zhitong Kan • Milo Lethorn • Jiayin Lu • Bingxu Qiang • Lei Yu •
University of Brighton
MA Photography
Falmouth University
MA Photography
Glasgow School of Art
Masters of Design in Photography
University of Portsmouth
MA Photography
Royal College of Art
MA Photography
Ulster University
MFA Photography