Yu Hong

For her 29th year/painting, she painted two portraits; in one, she is pregnant and in the next she has given birth.

From there, Hong began to paint her young daughter in attempts to chronicle her life as well.

Upon exhibiting ‘Witness to Growth’ for the first time, Hong placed a newspaper or magazine article to complement each image.

‘Witness to Growth’ is a ubiquitous series of works because it is a self-examination of the artist and her surroundings.

By linking herself to events that happened around her or around the world, Hong puts herself and her life on critical display.

The juxtaposition of social and political events against personal moments creates a tension and highlights the disparity between inner and outer events.

"“I show that my life and China changes: from a cultural revolution to right now.”."

Yu Hong (born 1966) is a Chinese contemporary artist.

Her works characteristically portray the female perspectives in all stages of life and the relationship between the individual and the rapid social changes taking place in China.

She works primarily in oil paint but also in pastels, fabric dye on canvas, silk and resin.

Yu Hong is "routinely named amongst China’s leading female artists".

Her work is celebrated for its intimacy, honesty and tactility.

Yu Hong was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province in 1966 and received her first degree from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988 in Beijing.

There she received a thorough training in the techniques of figural realism.

Early in her career, her paintings combined realistic portraits with surreal environments and colors.

However, as she progressed, her focus on surrealism eventually dissipated.

Instead, she focused more on her skills of observation and became very sensitive to facial expressions and body posture.

She married fellow Chinese contemporary artist Liu Xiaodong in the summer of 1993 and became a mother not long after.

In 1995, Hong received an MFA in Oil Painting from the Central Arts Institute of Beijing.

In addition, she and a small group of colleagues became known as the “New Generation” artists, known for their highly personal figurative works.

Hong now holds tenure as a professor of Oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing.

In 2023, she was part of the jury for the John Moores Painting Prize along with Alexis Harding, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Marlene Smith and The White Pube.

Hong’s subjects are predominately women.

In the history of Chinese art, women were often depicted engaged in everyday activities created by men who overlaid that subject with symbolic ramifications – the female point of view was not a viable mode of creation.

Hong’s work is different because she honors the female (and by extension, the individual) in all phases of life, from childhood to maturity.

She does not swathe her images with extreme symbolism or sentimentality.

Her subjects usually consist of herself, her friends, family and her daughter, Liu Wa.

Her method of painting is immensely personal and has been criticized as seemingly mundane, but she highlights the beauty in the intricacies of daily life, friendship, love and the impact of the environment on people.

In 2000, Hong began to work on ‘Witness to Growth’; a series of paintings created for each year of her life.

Each painting is a one-meter square canvas with an image of herself based on the photograph taken at the time.

She does not pay special attention to keeping a similar image; instead, some of the paintings seemed posed while others are spontaneous.

Hong uses compositions and colors to capture important ideas or experiences/moods to commemorate that time.

In 2003, Hong embarked on a new visual journey with her series ‘She’.

According to Hong, she “knew all these women so [she] went to their place – where they live, where they work and I painted what I saw in their life.”

The paintings included: “She: Beautiful Writer Zhao Bo”, “She: Art School Student” and “She: Tibetan Woman Zhou Ma” among others.

These paintings make clear the possibilities to be mined within the subject and highlight the role of the contemporary woman in Chinese society.

In particular, “She: Beautiful Writer Zhao Bo” captured the attitude and lifestyle of successful young women in the new China.

The splashes of bold color exhibit Hong’s ‘edgy color sense’ and signature painterly manner.

Hong and her husband Liu Xiaodong are often compared as having similar approaches to their work and as Liu’s work has grown more famous, Hong’s work took a slight backseat to his.

However, in recent years she has begun to explore different approaches to her work, distinguishing herself from the work of her husband without abandoning her usual subject matter.