Yufan Lu Selected as the First Grant Recipient of RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
We are pleased to announce that Yufan Lu, an artist working between China and Finland, has been selected as the first-ever grant recipient of RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES.
This year’s jury consisted of Alexa Becker, Erik Vroons, Giuseppe Oliverio, Staton Winter, and Marina Paulenka, who engaged in careful and thoughtful deliberation before selecting Lu’s project, “Return.”
The RPS Grant provides artists with the formal right to use our gallery space for an exhibition.
At Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo, a total of 26 grant recipients have presented their work, contributing to a rich and evolving history of exhibitions.
It is with great excitement and deep appreciation that we welcome Yufan Lu as the first artist to carry this lineage forward in Kyoto.
“Return” (2020–) is a project created as a personal ritual of remembrance for Lu’s late grandmother.
Using a thermal camera inside her home, he retraces familiar gestures through his own body, touching the objects and photographs she left behind.
Through temperature, imprints, and subtle traces, the work quietly evokes the presence of memory and affection.
The thermal camera—once a symbol of surveillance during the pandemic—is transformed here into an instrument for holding private time and intimate emotion.
In doing so, Lu reflects on the fragile thresholds between what is visible and invisible, what fades and what remains, and how memory continues to live within and around us.
The exhibition will take place in the second half of 2026 at RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES.
We look forward to opening this new chapter in Kyoto’s history with Lu’s work at its beginning.
RPS Grant — Applications Now Open
Deadline: March 31, 2026
https://reminders-project.org/en/grants/
RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES Artist-in-Residence Program
Applications are also currently open:
RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES | Artist-in-Residence Program: Winter–Spring 2026
https://reminders-project.org/en/rpskyotopaperolesresidency2026winter-springen/
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
Screenshot
©︎Yufan Lu / Return
Profile | Yufan Lu
Born 1991 in Tianjin, China. Currently based in Tianjin, China and Helsinki, Finland.
Lu’s work takes the form of still and moving images, sculpture, exhibition, photobook, etc, but she does not consider herself as a multidisciplinary artist, but a photographer that photographs with all kinds of materials at hand. She sees photography as a way of thinking, feeling, remembering and living. She often uses her own body as a medium to study and mediate the intersection between body and society, and evoke emotional resonance through shared human experience.
Her work has been exhibited globally and won recognitions such as the PHMuseum Grant New Generation honorable mention, Firecracker Photography Grant and Encontros da Imagem Photobook Award.