Person

Hu Xiangqian was born in Leizhou, Guangdong Province, in 1983. He graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. Hu’s artistic practice is grounded in performance and video works documented with an intentional amateurishness and crudeness. His inspirations and motivations arise from his immediate surroundings, his intuition, and his artistic contemplation of what it means to be an artist. His work highlights the contrasts in our society and amplifies minor incidents into major social signifiers. In his words, he does not consider what he does to be the making of performance art; rather he focuses on the act of performing itself. With their absurd characteristic, his works are often very humorous. His earliest work to gain widespread recognition was the 2006 video piece Blue Flag Waving, which documents Hu’s campaign for a seat during an election in his hometown. Though he was never an eligible candidate, he carried out a real campaign and devised a real agenda on how to address the social issues facing the village. The campaign he held is the artwork, accompanied by video documentation of the fake candidate’s attempt to run for office. His work has appeared in the Mindaugas Triennial, Baltic Triennial of Contemporary Art, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania (2012); Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art – Moving Image in China 1988–2011, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2011); CAFAM Biennale, Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing (2011); and the Asia Triennial Manchester, UK (2011). Hu Xiangqian lives and works in Beijing.