Person
Artist
Bu Hua
卜桦
Date of birth
1973
Place Of birth
Beijing, China
Biography
Painter, printmaker and digital animation pioneer, Bu Hua’s work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions in China, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Slovenia, the USA, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. Born in Beijing in 1973, and growing up surrounded by artists, Bu Hua ‘learned the language of lines’ from earliest childhood. Her father was a printmaker, painter, and a professor of Fine Arts in Beijing. Connected to the renaissance of printmaking that took place in the years following the Cultural Revolution, influenced by German Expressionists such as Kirchner and Kollwitz, he expected his children to follow in his footsteps. Bu Hua studied the techniques of ‘shui mo’ (water and ink) painting, and attended a specialist art high school before studying at Tsinghua University’s Institute of Fine Art. Bu Hua’s happy memories of her Beijing childhood provide the source of much of her imagery today. The red corridors and grey walls of traditional architecture, and the white bridges and willow trees of her city recur in her paintings, digital prints and animations. The same protagonist appears in many of her works: a sassy, pigtailed ‘Young Pioneer’ with her red scarf flying as she navigates a strangely dystopian universe, she represents the artist herself as a child. In Beijing dialect, this character is ‘sa mi’ (飒蜜) – a feisty girl with kick-ass attitude.
