Delving into alienation and the human experience to find inspiration in Ruoxi Hua's art.
Interview By Sooa Lim​​
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background as an artist?
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I was born and raised in Suzhou, China. Since my childhood, I have exhibited interest in drawing. My mother sent me to Sunday school to take drawing lessons with other kids. Growing up, I always perceive drawing as my hobby and nothing more. Even in high school, when I sought out to receive extracurricular academic training in drawing, croquis, and gauche, my priority was still classes at school. At that time, I focused on physics and chemistry, aiming to major in science in college. When I reached junior year in high school, I expressed to my parents my thought on attending an art school, only to receive a hard “NO.”
After travelling to the US for college, I planned to major in biology, but meanwhile I took as many art classes as I could. Under the encouragement from my art teachers, I eventually decided to double-major in biology and studio art and devote myself to oil painting. Additionally, I minored in philosophy, which I believed would be helpful to my creative practice. Over my sophomore and junior year, my passion for art became clearer, and I brought up in front of my parents the idea of attending an MFA program after college. At first, they were naturally not pleased at all. However, after months of negotiations, they finally allowed me to pursue what I love to do. So now I am a second-year MFA Fine Art candidate at School of Visual Arts, New York.
2. What themes or messages do you aim to convey through your art?
In my works, I focus on the disquiet we felt in the face of otherness, be it other individuals, groups, or spaces.
My works are often themed around the narrative of figures situated in some man-made but inhuman space. I am interested in space and composition, especially in the interaction of the organic shapes of figures with the architectural structures of their surroundings, as well as with the edge of the pictorial space.
The juxtaposition of individual humans and cold industrial structures imparts a sense of claustrophobia, alienation, repression, or even depression that one suffers living in the postmodern world. Figures in my works find themselves in spaces, such as public bathrooms and elevators, where the private confronts the public, where the isolated room provides moments of solitude and security to them, only for them to realize that their privacy is uncomfortably shared by others.
In my more extensive works, such as Portrait of Mme H. Flower in the White Room, to contrast the alienated individuals that are my subjects, I adopt narrative structures that allude to Western mythology and literature, thus producing a comical effect via the conflict between the tradition of metanarrative and the postmodern void of collective meaning.
3. How do you approach a new artwork, from concept to completion?
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My new works can begin with either a form or a concept that I am interested in. I keep a pocket-sized sketchbook with me to record intriguing subjects or intriguing ideas. Sometimes I will leave these materials for weeks or months, and then one day I might decide that some of them are worth further developing.
If the work is going to be conceptually complex, I will write an outline first. The outline helps me structure the narrative and conceive the subject matter of the work. Next, I will go through several versions of preliminary sketches. During this process, I add, subtract, or move the elements in the composition. After I am satisfied with the sketch, I will do a small oil study that allows me to preview the overall effect of the final work. Finally, I will start working on the “real” work. However, I try to avoid simply replicating my primary sketch and study. Instead, I consciously make decisions that deviates from my preparatory works, so that the work always feels fresh to me.
4. What inspires your artwork, and how does your environment influence your creative process?
My current body of works is inspired by my time in college during the pandemic. Under quarantine, I did not have many close friends around, and I spent most of the week on my own. Even when it was the holiday, I could not go back to my hometown. I did not enjoy the solitude at all, but I slowly and unconsciously got used to it. My time alone allowed me to be more conscious of myself as an individual and more sensitive to the people and environment around me. I thought a lot about my isolation — how it happened, whether it happened to others as well, and whether there was a way out. Meanwhile, during that time I began to learn about writers such as Tolstoy, Joyce, and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s view on life as constant suffering, along with Tolstoy’s and Joyce’s use of encyclopedic or epic narrative to depict and transcend suffering, has heavily influenced the format and concept of my current works.
5. What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?
At a young artist, I face many challenges: how to improve technically when I lack the extensive and intensive academic training that my peers have, how to take more risk in my creative process, how to overcome self-doubt, how to develop my own artistic language, how to keep my painting relevant in the contemporary context when so many aspects of painting have already been explored, how to establish my connection with the art world… The truth is, at this stage, I cannot say that I have overcome any of them, because solving these problems requires a lot of time. That means I have to face yet another challenge: how to be patient with myself, how to keep working even knowing I am not yet able to produce the work I want to produce. Faced with all these unresolved issues, I simply don’t quit, keep doing what I am doing, and believe that these challenges will be overcome one by one.
6. Does your identity as an Asian inform your art, or do you think it's irrelevant?
I have to say that my Asian identity is not really that relevant to my artistic practice. I don’t think I need to be an Asian to be able to say what I am saying through my artworks. On the contrary, I believe that one of the privileges that we get to enjoy as contemporary artists is the freedom to recreate ourselves, to be aware of and yet not married to our past.
Nevertheless, there are unique perspectives that come with being an Asian artist practicing Western oil painting, or being a multi-cultural artist in general. Recently, a friend of mine pointed out that my works seem to be influenced by the geometric designs of Classical Gardens of my hometown Suzhou. Up until that moment, such connection never occurred to me because I mainly referred to Western tradition in my works. Another friend introduced me to the idea of “white space” in traditional Chinese painting, which I once again discover in my own works. Moments like these where I witness the convergence of aesthetic concepts from remotely different art traditions are truly inspiring, as it motivates me to reflect on why different cultures have tacitly agreed to value these qualities.
7. Can you describe your daily routine as an artist? What practices or habits are essential to your creative process?
I usually wake up between 7 and 8 in the morning. I take a 15-minute subway ride to school, and I get breakfast on the way. I normally arrive at school before 10. During the semester, I might have class starting from 10am. If I don’t have any class, I will keep working in my studio. I normally spend 5 to 7 hours painting every day, which means I leave my studio between 5 and 6 in the evening. If I am not particularly tired that day, I will take a 45-minute back to where I live, during which I will visit a comic store and a bookstore. After getting back home and taking a shower, I will spend an hour reading if I am not too tired. Before bed, I watch some relaxing TV shows, usually Family Guys.
I think persistently working is the most important habit to my creative process. Living in New York City, where there are always so much to see and experience, I can easily feel my studio practice is monotonous and tedious. Sometimes, I don’t feel like getting out of my bed at all. However, I constantly remind myself that it is the small steps I take every day that will lead to bigger leaps in my artistic practice and career. Nonetheless, taking plenty of rest is equally important as working hard. I cannot produce my best work if I am burnt out.
8. What upcoming artworks, projects, or exhibitions are you currently working on?
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I am currently working on a diptych which depicts two nocturnal scenes that seem disconnected but somehow related. The painting is inspired by a mural I encountered one evening. The mural, which consists of green background and orange circles, is located on a wall of a building above its balcony. In the night, the spotlights will shine on the mural, creating an area of acid green that really pops up from the night sky. The painting doesn’t have any figure in it, but the two scenes imply the movement of a figure through the cityscape. As in my other works, I am trying to play with the geometric arrangements of my subjects and invite the shape of my panels to be part of the play.
Chief Editor Paris Koh