Jiahui Hou (b.1998), is based in Hebei and London, where she attends Royal College of Arts, mainly uses watercolor, acrylic and digital painting as her primary mediums.
When did you discover you were an artist?
I learned to draw when I was a child, but I didn't realize what art was until three years ago, when I transferred my secrets and negative emotions to art creation, it was one of the ways to heal myself, and then I decided to be an artist. For me, painting plays an important part in my real life. In this process, I can find the meaning of life.
Can you describe your creative process?
Due to the instinct of self-protection and early experience of being hurt during the growth, I seldom reveal my inner feelings to others. Maybe because I have been repressed by such negative emotions for a long time, which transfers my inner negative emotions to artistic creation, which also results in my less direct description of emotion and pain in the process of creation, with the works often metaphorized in different forms. During this process, I opened these wounds layer by layer by myself, revealing gradual self-healing.
How would you describe your work and your research?
Most of the inspiration for the current works comes from the inner self, human nature and some social phenomena. I think the close connection between real society and individuals is an eternal philosophical problem in the process of human life. I hope that in the vagueness, the audience can connect their own personal feelings and awaken their inner feelings and pain. In my opinion, always repressing the feeling is consuming my life, so only by communicating with her heart and facing the pain can I cure myself.
What do you see your in your nearest future, is there a specific message you would like to spread through your work?
I will continue to create and will not give up my art career, the metaphor of self-struggle often appears in my works. Facing my negative emotions can heal myself. At the same time, I hope my works inspire the audience to think about the human nature understand themselves better, and find the real meaning of life.
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