Shouhui Lu: Chinese visual artist

I am Chinese artist Shouhui Lu. My artistic practice centers on traditional Chinese xuan paper as the core material medium. By deconstructing the material boundaries of heterogeneous mediums such as ink, mineral pigments, and oil pastels, I construct a unique visual syntax system. Over the past thirty years, I have gradually come to perceive through the changes in daily life that all beautiful things are veiled by a thin layer of pain. An individual’s life is a continuous cycle of writing and erasure. Behind many seemingly beautiful things lie profound wounds. Individuals today also experience various pains and struggles amid the rapidly evolving social currents. My work departs from this point to express the incompleteness, struggles, and pains of individuals in contemporary society. In my works, I use everyday objects, various plants, fruits, and seeds to symbolize the "individual." I also employ visual symbols from daily life to convey or metaphorize the struggles and pains experienced by individuals. For example, mosaic patterns metaphorize individual wounds, disappearance, and unreality; caution tape symbolizes the various "breakdowns" and dangers encountered in a person’s life; red clouds represent anxiety, etc. The mutual piercing between objects also metaphorizes the pains individuals endure throughout their lives, such as a branch piercing into the body of another object.