Alumnus Zejun Yao awarded Café Royal Publishing Grant 2024
The Café Royal Publishing Grant for 2024 has been awarded to practice-led PhD graduate Dr Zejun Yao.
Café Royal Books is a family-run publishing house located on the North West coast of England. The publishing house champions work that doesn’t have a platform, remains overlooked or is underrepresented, alongside publishing work that is perhaps better represented. Books include collections of works by artists such as Shirley Baker, Martin Parr, Ian Beasley and Jo Spence, as well as many less well-known photographers.
The Café Royal Publishing Grant is a new initiative aimed at honouring photographers whose work celebrates themes of running or the natural environment. Awarded annually, the grant enables one photographer to have their work published – submissions were invited earlier this year via a free, global open call.
Zejun Yao has been announced as this year’s winner and his book of photographs is due to be published this autumn.
Zejun Yao, Paris, 2022 © Marie-Lys Le Brun.
Dr Zejun Yao is an artist-sportive-researcher who completed a practice-led PhD in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies in 2023.
He identifies his practice as medium to address and demonstrate the artefact and process of contemporary art making on public participation and artistic collaboration.
His current research focuses on the production of knowledge which requests and responds culturally and artistically to the emerging field of art and sport.
Yao is driven by an interest in the multi-sensory and perceptive, primarily addressing audio-visual techniques and cinematographic aesthetics. His work often takes the form of performances and installations that use bodily gestures and movements including dance, gymnastics and sport.
Zejun Yao’s upcoming publication with Café Royal Books is a black-and-white photographic series, captured between 2012 and 2024.
This collection engages viewers in an exploration of the human experience, highlighting tangible conditions and relations. Yao's perspective seeks an appreciation for the harmony between creative commitment and the endurance representation of bodily movement, challenging assumptions within these interconnected realms of running scenes.
Zejun Yao, Leeds, 2019.
Zejun said:
“The theme of ‘Nature and Running’ for the publishing grant deeply resonates with me, as this new collection feels like a natural continuation of my PhD at Leeds. It encapsulates the mindset I’ve cultivated throughout my academic journey.
“Central to my response is the simple yet powerful concept of the ‘heartbeat’ – a guiding force in both art and sport. While there’s often a perceived boundary between these two worlds, I’ve found that they intersect through shared cognitive, emotional and physical experiences.”
Zejun Yao, Leeds, 2024.
Chris Taylor, Professor of Fine Art Practice at the University of Leeds and one of Zejun’s PhD supervisors, said:
“In acknowledgement of his unique ‘artisthlete’ practice, the Café Royal award is a prodigious artist-publishing opportunity for Zejun. The book format, with its predisposition towards narrative, time and travel, is the perfect vehicle for Zejun’s physical and artistic journeys.
“Café Royal’s now global reach will provide a complimentary international platform for an artist who has literally run around the world in pursuit of his goals – an area of research developed out of his sustained engagement with art and sport, film directing and dance.”
Zejun Yao’s book – On the Run – is due to be published in October 2024. Full details will be made available on the Café Royal Books website.
Feature image
Zejun Yao, Brittany, 2021.
