How leisure time on a city beach reveals the gaps and connections in urban communities

The Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou’s series The Humors sets out to explore ‘urban behaviours and relationships, those of people and of the built environment itself’. In this instalment, Zhou presents a collage of overhead scenes of recreation and relaxation from Oak Street Beach, Chicago – a stretch of sand nestled between Lake Michigan and the city’s imposing skyscrapers. In Zhou’s words, the piece is a reflection on the way in which ‘we live in big cities like we live in small towns – except that our communities are scattered across a dense network of other communities and other storied lives of which we only catch a glimpse’.