Shouhui Lu
中文版
From birth to death, an individual is returning and cycling. An individual's life is full of failures and repeated writing and erasure.
My 30 years, past and reshaping
Foreword: Remember the past and reshape the present. The article "My 30 Years, Past and Remodeling" is my description of the past 30 years of life experience, and the reasons for the formation of my work are brought out through the memories of 30 years of life. The various images and symbols that appear in them are closely related to my life in the past 30 years. The environment I live in and the events I have experienced are necessary factors to promote the formation of my current work.
In the tenth day of the 1990 lunar calendar, I was born in a remote rural area in the northwest. I'm the second child, but strictly speaking, I'm the third child, because my second brother, who was just born, was less than 1 year old It died prematurely, and my mother said, my second brother is very beautiful, and it is the best-looking among our three children, but it is a pity that he died prematurely. He died in poverty, in the lack of social medical conditions at that time, in the lack of experience of my parents, and in the social environment at that time. My second brother is a family planning child, and so am I. The story about my second brother was told to me later by my mother.
When I was born, I lived in poverty and had insufficient food, so I lived very frugally. At that time, there was no electricity in the village, and there was often an oil lamp at home. Our family always ate and chatted under the dim oil lamp. I have been an introvert since I was a child, which may be one of the opportunities for me to embark on the road of art later, because art can always heal you without words. In the following 30 years, every bit of my hometown and my personal experience have become indelible traces in my art works.
In my long life, the things I am most familiar with are the land, mountains, sky, trees in the countryside, and the studio space where I live day and night. These are the things that accompany me throughout my life. I was born in the countryside, went to school, and witnessed my father's death. He lay in the field full of potatoes and left without a word. Before he left, I didn't see him. The land where I grew up grows the crops that feed us and buries our loved ones. Yes, that piece of loess is so good, it makes people feel inexplicably sad. Back and forth, life thrives on that land. Perhaps the ever-changing people and things in the countryside have given me a mature understanding of life too early. All beautiful things are covered with a layer of painful gauze. This is what I have been doing in my works. I have been a lonely person since I was a child, and I am shy and seldom talk, but this gives me more time to observe the world and the strange things happening on that land. I have never been a lucky person. I envy those who are lucky. Everything I do takes more time than others to complete, and sometimes it is not very ideal. Many times it is frustrating and makes people doubt the injustice of God. Later, I understood that this is life, this is life. People always make various choices in struggle, and various pains accompany us throughout our lives. I witnessed the deaths of my grandfather, my grandmother, and my father one after another. I wore white mourning clothes and knelt in front of my grandmother's grave, in front of my grandfather's grave, and later in front of my father's grave. I remember the day of the burial, the sky was filled with paper money, and the cries were drowned in the strong wind. I knelt in front of my father's grave and thought about every detail of his life, and all the efforts and hardships he had to make a living. This is life, and we always have to go and start the next reincarnation. Looking at the grave pile that everyone had piled up with shovels, it was so high that it looked like a mountain. Yes, when this mountain of my father fell, it also ended his busy life, his life of running around for a living, like a life of cattle and horses.
Those simple and rich things in my life with a rural flavor connect my memories and life. They later appeared in my works. Although they have long become indistinguishable, it is undeniable that those things have indeed become the main source of images in my works. Trees, mountains, land, flowers, grasses, fruit seeds, etc., all appear in my works. I like hard things. Maybe this is related to my weak character since childhood. Things with a hard appearance can balance my weak heart. I still remember that when I was wandering on the desolate hillsides and fields, I suddenly saw the withered flowers and plants swaying in the wind. I couldn't suppress my joy. I was more excited to see the dead trees than the trees with green leaves, because the dead trees made me have a kind of awe for life and let me see its tenacity. I am indifferent to death. I am stubborn, sometimes like a donkey, my soul is hard.
My works are trying hard to talk about the pain and struggle of individuals in their lives. I always try to explain the painful, uneasy and anxious things behind beautiful things. I don't want to sing praises of beauty, because my life and the lives of others I have seen are full of contradictions and misfortunes. I have seen the disgrace caused by the misfortune of marriage, the sad ending of being left alone in old age, and the daily life of daily necessities that consumes people's spirit. I have also seen the suppression and disdainful eyes of the powerful against the common people, the daily quarrels of neighbors, fighting for their own interests, the laughter between relatives turning into no contact, brothers not communicating with each other because of trivial matters, people who greet each other today will be separated by two lives tomorrow... Too many hardships and pains fill our lives. I think these people and things that I have experienced and seen with my own eyes are the reasons why I have incompletely expressed the "individual" in my later works. That incompleteness is my true feedback on life. I have been talking about the relationship between the individual and society in my works. In the current social context, the individual's living status and mental state. I regard the "objects" in my works as the carriers of us humans, and they have an indelible relationship with us. In my works, they are me, I am them, and they are every living individual. I give those "objects" the identity of individual life, and I let them speak for us humans. Therefore, the individual objects in my works are everyone and every individual of our present. That is, the sunflower is me, a tree is me, a mountain is me, a seed is me, a leaf is me, animals are me, flowers and plants are me, and everything can be me.
Back to when I was in elementary school, the conditions for going to school in the countryside were not good. I had to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning, wash my face, pack the steamed buns baked by my mother, and walk to school. We had to walk for more than an hour on the mountain road to get to school, and we had to climb a mountain during the period. In the dark night road in the early morning, I could only hear my small and dense footsteps and panting. Fortunately, I was a good student at that time, which was worthy of those hard days. In winter, sometimes the snow was very thick, but we still had to go to school on time. Every winter, my feet and hands were swollen. Because my family was poor and I had no cotton shoes to wear, my feet and hands were often frozen and swollen, and even frozen. To this day, there is still a scar on my right big toe that was left by freezing. It was a gift from time to time. Later, when I went to junior high school, the conditions did not get much better. Long-term malnutrition made me thin and small. The only food I had a week was four or five white flour buns with a diameter of about 30cm baked by my mother, and no other nutritious food. The school dormitory was extremely cold. Dozens of people lived in one dormitory. It was a dormitory with a bunk bed. Because it was too cold, we didn't take off our clothes and fell asleep wrapped in a thin quilt. There were also huge rats to keep us company. In the three years of junior high school, I was admitted to the best high school in the county with excellent grades. Relatives and friends all praised me. Because I was admitted to the best high school, there would be no problem in going to college in the future. If they knew that I dropped out of school to paint, they would definitely not have the same idea as before. It was also later that I realized the bitterness of human nature. When I first arrived in high school, I had a hard time adapting to school life because of my slow personality. As a result, my grades were always ranked at the bottom. By the second year of high school, I gradually lost interest in learning. The boring, tedious and stereotyped learning process was painful. At this time, by chance, I saw an exhibition of traditional Chinese paintings. From then on, the seeds of art were deeply planted in my heart. From then on, I began to learn Chinese painting by myself, bought paints and picture albums and began to copy. Later, by chance, I saw Picasso's picture album. It was a shocking afternoon. I was deeply shocked by Picasso's works. It turned out that painting could be done in that way. It is not an exaggeration to say that Picasso was my enlightenment teacher. I read that book more than a dozen times later, and the cover of the book was torn. I still remember what he said: A gun can express war, and an apple can also express war.
Picasso's artistic thought had a profound influence on me. It was my luck to see Picasso's album in that remote county town, which also laid the groundwork for me to give up the college entrance examination and go home to paint in my senior year of high school. In the second half of the second year of high school, I went to a college entrance examination art training school in Lanzhou to study painting. There I learned sketching, quick sketching and color, but I clearly knew that those were not what I wanted. After the joint examination, I resolutely gave up the college entrance examination and returned to my rural hometown to pursue my own painting. Of course, my parents strongly opposed it, but I was a stubborn donkey, and they couldn't do anything about me. They were just disappointed in me. For a while, relatives, friends and neighbors all knew about it, and they all expressed confusion and doubts, and had their own opinions, that is, I must be possessed. Over time, my parents gradually accepted this matter, but I could still hear the neighbors' negative comments on me, as well as the sarcasm after dinner. I remember that there was a person who would chat with me abnormally every time he saw me with a yin and yang tone. Until later, I had nothing to say to this person, and I was always speechless when I met him. At that time, I deeply experienced the acrimony of human nature. I basically lost interest in people at that time. People are not as good as a flower, not as cute as a caterpillar in the field, and not as loyal and meddlesome as a dog. That period of time was my darkest moment. I was afraid of seeing people, so I took detours as much as possible. Fortunately, there were green leaves of art accompanying me along the way. It was lonely but not boring. In my spare time from the busy farming season, I would paint. I did the work in the field and on the rice paper at the same time. I planted wheat, planted potatoes, harvested wheat, dug potatoes, and plowed the land. My father was a silent person. In my memory, my father did not talk much to us. The most conversation between my father and me was that after my mother finished cooking, I would go and call him to eat. The phrase "Dad, it's time to eat" has been with me for more than 20 years. Maybe this is the Chinese father-son relationship. As time went by, my father no longer mentioned my dropping out of school. Instead, he supported me financially. I often took the hundreds of yuan my father gave me to take a long car to the provincial capital to buy painting tools. I went there and came back on the same day.
In 2014, after five years in the countryside, I went to the county town and rented a 30-square-meter house to continue my creation. The light in that house was not good, so I could only paint with the lights on. I witnessed the alternation of new and old things in my room. A white room slowly accumulated a lot of things, useful, useless, newly bought, old, and those objects filled my life. The rapidly overlapping objects made me think about our relationship with society. We are like those objects, and our identities change in the flow of time. Those objects are the products of this era, and so are we. In the social environment, everything cannot escape its influence. Time is slowly advancing, my friends around me buy houses and cars, get married and have children, and I witness their anxiety and struggle in specific events. The daily trivialities of life make everyone physically and mentally exhausted. People's eyes are full of emptiness, and they are still worried about where tomorrow's expenses will come from in their dreams. A living person is hollowed out by today's various needs, and these needs are the product of this society, and people have changed with it. We are already middle-aged, and looking back at our past selves, we find that things have long changed and are blurred. Under the influence of the trend of the times, each of us has finally become the same, with fireworks everywhere, and our hearts are full of anxiety. The seemingly beautiful life is actually covered with a layer of painful gauze.
Farmers' children grow up early. I still remember that I went to the fields to help my parents pick potatoes after school, and drove the sheep with my grandfather on weekends. My grandfather liked to pick firewood and dried donkey dung eggs. The dry branches that could be found everywhere became a frequent visitor in his hands. When he returned home at night, my grandfather could always pick up a large bundle of branches, and these branches became a common sight in front of my family's stove. I often helped my mother to light a fire and cook. Those dry branches were put into the stove hole through my little hands. The crackling sound of the dry firewood and the raging fire seemed to be a resistance to fate, but they also resigned themselves to their fate and finally turned into ashes. Branches have become a frequent visitor in my life for more than 30 years. They change various identities in the four seasons and bring warmth to our family. Later, branches running through my body always appeared in my works. I think this quiet appearance is inseparable from my more than 30 years of rural life. Branches have long been deeply rooted in my blood. Branches can play a wide range of roles and bring visual and spiritual pleasure to people, just like the green leaves hanging on the branches in summer. How much we like them. However, branches can also threaten life and are full of danger and pain. All things have two sides, beautiful and destructive, or painful.
I also wanted to express some beautiful things, but I couldn't draw them. This is probably because I have never really felt happy in the past 30 years. Maybe I have been happy, but it was too short, so short that people can't remember its goodness. Therefore, in my works, individual struggles and scars have become the theme. In a way, I am a pessimist. I can always see the unfavorable side behind things first. I gave up the college entrance examination and went home to paint. At that time, I had long hair. How rebellious it was in a remote rural area. Therefore, I was also ridiculed by my neighbors in the countryside. In their eyes, I looked so weird and so out of tune with that village. I was lonely at that time. Although loneliness still exists today, I was even more lonely at that time.
My hometown carries my ideals and also buries my pain, but I still love that land, because there is lovely life on that land. The vital soil makes me happy physically and mentally, and the flowers and plants swaying in the wind on the hillside make my heart soft. Because they have no traces of people, they appear lovely and full of vitality.