Never About Us

Boyu Xu's MFA Defence
November 16, 2026 | 10:30 AM
Room 4390 – SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver

Never About Us is a three-channel video installation that combines large-scale animated projections, floor projections of mock-up sales advertisements, and bird-documentation videos on a small display. The project was inspired by the 117 Tower, the world's tallest unfinished building in Tianjin, China. 117 Tower is the result of a company that planned to build the tallest tower in my hometown but went bankrupt midway through construction. As a result, it stood abandoned before my eyes for more than a decade. This project seeks to explain Tianjiners' complex feelings toward the tower and to reflect on how human failure gave nature the opportunity to reconnect. Rather than trying to fix our own problems, nature always takes responsibility for us. The tower's decay shifted the perspective toward a broader narrative, in which the traditional line of development and decay stopped making sense, while a web of interconnected species began to take shape.