Hanwen Hu

About

Joanne Hu | Hanwen Hu is an artist from southern China, she currently works and lives in London.

She received a Post Graduate Diploma in media and advertising from Leicester and BA in Graphic design.

Before RCA she worked in journalism, marketing director.

Contact

Degree Details

Statement

Every experience is, a leap into nothingness, only response can be profound.

我不相信虚无的关系 唯有回应才会深刻.

"The key word 'relationship' recurs in my various artistic practices, from an inward study of the relationship between self and personal identity to an outward study of my relationship with the world. Looking back at my various works, the construction of 'intimacy' is something that I have always sought through my art practice, and so in many of my projects I have positioned my research as an exploration of 'intimacy'.

For me, art has a healing effect. The key words art therapy and healing play a large part in my practice.

I always asked myself: how do I deal with loss in intimate relationships and tried to find an answer with my creative work.

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dd — The work consists of a small acoustic field consisting of a chain of freely unfolded chains with bells evenly distributed on top. When it is windy or rainy, the bell makes a random sound. Bells are made of different metals and thus produce different sounds. The work seeks to combine sound with natural forces to evoke memories of villages through the bell sounding and reflect upon damage brought by city change.

Medium: Metal sculpture, bell

Size: 6*6*3m

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ee — Negative electrode is a concept from physics, but also a symbol for relations. The project mainly centres around group relations. Such a relation is an intangible bond which can not be broken away from. Under such circumstances, the role we are playing has originally been determined, even the characters ourselves can not free from such destined and dramatic performance. The cage with animals trapped in is a tangible constraint, while the cage of human beings is an intangible isolation in group relations.
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Medium: glass, universal wheel

Size: 55-55-5cm

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ee — I was inspired by a near-death experience. I used real world scenes to simulate what I saw during the near-death experience and also to recreate it, as I remember 50% of the experience clearly, and 50% is blurred. The images in this film are chaotic and overlapping.

Size: 1080p single channel video

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sss — Visual fragments as an essential research method, which aims to explore 'how can we deconstruct and rebuild relationship of self-identity through art practice?' It consists of a rotating installation, a series of abstract painting and reconstructed photography.

Medium: Canvas, Acrylic

Size: 10*10cm

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ii — As time progressed, my grandmother's ageing made me realise that I had less and less control over this intimate relationship and that I could not stop the passage of time. I didn't really know how to face these questions even as I feared loss. At different stages of my life, in different places where I with my grandmother, I tried to take out my Polaroid for a camera-less exposure and let the Polaroid sit in the air, and these Polaroid, which recorded different important scenes, appeared as all blank.
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ii — In many of my practices I am used to deconstructing different images, and exposing the Polaroid in the air was my deconstruction technique in this project, resulting in exposed blank sheets that look the same but have different contents, images that I reconstructed to have an existential meaning. These blank images link the most important places in my intimate relationship with my grandmother.
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ii — After I had photographed all the relevant scenes, I began to think about how these photographs captured the moment, connected the past and the future, but could not remove the fear of a little dissolving intimacy. So I began to experiment with abstract painting to overcome these fears and I started a daily painting practice. Experimenting with drawing as a second exposure. A double creation exposure.

Medium: Polaroid, Jewellery paints

Size: Dimensions variable