River Yuhao Cao 曹宇豪 is an artist filmmaker and performance artist based in the UK. Inspired by the performative aspects of mourning in regional Chinese folk traditions, River explores this as a regenerative practice. Through this lens, he reconstructs landscapes from his early memories of Southern China in his work, while uncovering the perspective of the revenant. River is interested in how lamentation as a translation strategy interprets the fluidity of the subject. Cao’s debut artist film The Glass Essays has been presented at Visions du Réel, Switzerland; Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada; Kasseler Dokfest, Germany and institutions including the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, London; LUX, London; UCCA Museum, Beijing; South London Gallery, and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. His work has also been shown at B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt; Tofu Collective, Copenhagen; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; Nottingham Contemporary, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; among others. Cao’s work is held in the UK Government Art Collection (GAC). River has been selected for New Contemporaries 2025, the Film London FLAMIN Fellowship (2023–24), and was a finalist for the Film London Lodestars Award 2025 in the Artist Filmmaker category. Additionally, River was nominated for the LOEWE FOUNDATION / Studio Voltaire Award in 2023 and featured in the DAZED 100 alongside Queer Direct in 2022.
