Rui Hua

About

My works are derived from my daily life observation and philosophical thinking, and extend to the community and society. I hope to explore something beyond the form and return to the essence, consider  what contemporary art need to research which not only criticize current social problems,  but also need to try to bring the audiences resonate and thinking.

My works include installation, oil painting, printmaking. I take the observation of obvious and easily disappearing traces as my perspective, and try to find new expression and development in traditional printmaking, new media art and digital prints.

Before I started my work, I went through a very confused period, often feeling that time and world was constantly passing around me, but I could not capture the traces of my existence in the world. Therefore, in the project “The milky way”（2024）, I began to focus on how to visualize these “flowing traces”. I collected traces of London’s land by using sliced bread as a medium, put them on the pavements and the jagged stone paths to get the footprints from people, and collected traces of London’s water by drawing ripples along the river and recording coordinates. I hope this project can find personal traces while coming from the traces of group life, so I use a hand-made book as a presentation form, and use a printer to directly print on gauze and cotton to express “flowing traces”in an unclear transfer way. The process of sewing and making by hand also integrates my personal traces into the work.

However, after making this work, I was about to graduate, and my young cousin was seriously ill. Since then, I noticed that many friends and families around me wanted time to stay in a certain moment, of course, time cannot stop, so I began to think about how to preserve the most beautiful memories. I created the project “Back to me some day”（2024）. I put the sliced European pears into the acrylic box and tried to seal those pears. Obviously, this could not be successful, just like we can not record the happiest moment every time. But I found the pears in the acrylic box were rotting and disappeared at the same time that mold began to grow. By presenting this “material flowing”, I hope to show the audience that while cherishing every encounter, they don’t have to worry so much about the separation and the passage of time, because we will meet again in every “flow cycle”. (Artist Wolfgang Laib gave me a lot of inspiration in the selection of materials for this project, such as combining perishable materials with basically non-perishable materials to explore eternity)

Work “Back to me someday”（2024） has exerted a great influence on me. It is also because of this work that I want to do works with a sense of responsibility. I believe that my contemporary art works should not only criticize some social status, but also heal and give the audience courage and direction.