River Yuhao Cao 曹宇豪 (b. 1997, China) is an artist filmmaker and performance artist based in London.

Inspired by the performative aspects of mourning in regional Chinese folk traditions, River explores it as a regenerative practice. Through this lens, he reconstruct 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 first artist film ‘The Glass Essays’ has been featured in Visions du Réel, Switzerland; Vancouver International Film Festival, Canada; Kasseler Dokfest, Germany; South London Gallery, UK; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), UK; His previous work has been featured in B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Germany; Tofu Collective, Denmark; Sadie Coles HQ, UK; Saatchi Gallery, UK; Nottingham Contemporary, UK; and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), among others.

River has been selected for New Contemporaries 2025 and received the Arts Council England National Lottery Project Award in 2024, 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.