Hu Jiayi

Jiayi Hu (She) b.1993, Xinjiang, China. Base in Chongqing. Jiayi Hu is a conceptual artist who mainly creates performance art, video, picture photography, installation, and painting.
 
She is also invited to perform performance art performances and exhibitions in different countries, including ‘Bodies of Water’ Shanghai Biennale, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China, ‘Intimacy’, Leofanti film festival in Venice, Italy, ‘Becoming – Experimental’ Video Works, Eli Klein Gallery, New York, America.
Hu Jiayi is the only student so far who has won two Luo Zhongli Fellowship at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute of arts, where she graduated, where she currently teaches experimental video art. She has participated in several residencies including the Kwangju Museum of Art.
 
She is sensitive to the changes in her own environment and presents art from a unique perspective that is different from the habitual thinking of social life. Her performance art is not supported by creative concepts, but an interpretation of her own life experience, which is honest, pure, and brave.

Caltrops

Hu Jiayi, Performance/Video installation (5-channel), 2023.

Caltrops

Piece Description

Text: Sofie Su

In this artwork we find that a suit of armor, originally intended as a defensive barrier, becomes a form of restraint. In an abandoned factory, Hu Jiayi dons a set of Don Quixote-style medieval knight armor, engaging in a battle against her own shadow, upholding inner courage, confidence, and faith.

Through her interaction with the ‘fallen societal windmills,’ she connects the geographical environment with her psychological experience. She poses the question of “how to face the shackles of caltrops,” as she searches for a cycle of shelter and adventure, bestowing and reclaiming her own system of meaning.

Carrying the artist’s sense of mission, she grandiosely pursues a place of inner peace, persistently falling and rising again, striving to construct an ideal realm of ‘I become.’

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