“Past, present and future collide in the imagined adventures of this ‘Beijing babe’; through her eyes we see the craziness of the contemporary world.”
Bu Hua, Sa mi [ I ], 2023, digital painting, ed of 30, 75×75 cm
“Bu Hua tells compelling stories. In her complex, ambitious digital paintings, prints and time-based works, she creates a speculative digital world that blends the uncanny and fantastical with the whimsical. They seem to suggest an idyllic Garden of Eden – yet on closer examination we discover their darker implications. Her works reveal more than meets the eye, suggesting innocence betrayed, a dystopian fairy tale. ‘On the surface it’s very cute and very lovely,’ she told me in our first conversation many years ago, ‘but underneath there is anxiety and pressure.’[1]
Her work has consistently focused on the experiences of women through the character of her alter-ego, a small girl who is often dressed in the uniform of the Young Pioneers Communist youth organisation. This tiny, intrepid, red scarved character rides on the backs of dinosaurs and giant skeletons. She battles demons, defeats marauding skeletons and giant insects, attacks fighter jets with a slingshot, or insouciantly smokes a cigarette. She inhabits a speculative world of abundant flora and fauna, mountains, gardens, pavilions, rivers, and vast oceans. She is, Bu Hua says, a braver version of herself. In Beijing dialect, she is 飒蜜 (‘sa mi’). Valiant, admirably cool, but also sweet: she’s a girl with ‘swagger’, says the artist.
Bu Hua, Spring breeze blowing, 2023, digital painting, unique edition, 140×68 cm
Past, present and future collide in the imagined adventures of this ‘Beijing babe’; through her eyes we see the craziness of the contemporary world. Maybe it’s a post-apocalyptic world, or maybe just a dream. Humans cohabit with animals and other life forms – although this is not always a peaceful co-existence. Deliberately ‘cute’ (可爱) in its aesthetic, often depicting nostalgic toys and small animals, Bu Hua’s world intrigues, delights, and provokes thought. She is remembering her own girlhood in a very different Beijing of grey walls, red doors, white bridges and bicycles, a stark contrast with today’s megacity. When we look more deeply, however, we understand that Bu is inviting us to see how our world could be different, and how we might reconsider our place in it. An opportunity, even, for re-worlding at a time of deepening division, conflict and ecological crisis.
Bu Hua deals in allegory as an aesthetic strategy. Her work constructs fantastical, dark fairytales in which the cute and catastrophic are juxtaposed. Her works may be read as critiques of our increasingly dangerous and fractured geopolitics and of impending environmental disasters, but they also suggest the possibilities of harmony between humans and the natural world – indeed, of the Daoist/Confucian concept of tian di ren heyi (天地人合一) – meaning ‘heaven, earth and humans united’. Always, however, she alludes to the bravery of those willing to move beyond predetermined pathways, to challenge their limits and chart their own journeys, both spiritual and physical.
The recurring theme is courage.”
-Dr Luise Guest, 2025
[1] Luise Guest, Half the Sky: Conversations with Women Artists in China, Sydney: Piper Press (2016)
