Zhou Tao was born in 1976 in Changsha, China, and currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China. Zhou’s work reflects on the activities and elements of everyday life. His subtle and humorous videos record interactions among people, things, and situations, touching on questions about the multiple trajectories of reality. For Zhou, the decision to use video was not so much a deliberate choice of artistic language or medium; instead, he regards the operation of the camera as a way of being that blends itself with everyday life. Zhou belongs to a generation of Chinese artists whose careers have coincided with a period of rapid urbanization and industrialization—changes that have been the subject of much of his work. His body of video work thematizes displacements, unstable subjectivities, and the uncertainties of contemporary identity.
Zhou has had solo exhibitions at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2013), the Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2012), Queen’s Nails Projects, San Francisco (2011), Location One, New York (2010), and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2009). He has been in group exhibitions at the 6th Curitiba Biennial, Brazil (2011), the Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2011), Museum Het Domein, Sittard, the Netherlands (2011), Marina Abramovic Institute West, San Francisco (2010), the International Center of Photography, New York (2009), the 7th Shanghai Biennale (2008), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2008), He Xiangning Art Museum / OCT Art Center, Shenzhen, China (2008), the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2008), the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007), Isola d’Arte, Milan, Italy (2006), Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing (2006), Asia-Australia Arts Centre, Sydney (2006), Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong (2005), and the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art (2004).