YAN WU
- ARTISTIC HUB MAGAZINE
- Sep 12
- 5 min read
CHINA | UK
Paintings as Bridges Across Time
Yan Wu’s art opens a space between tradition and the present, between London and Beijing, where silk and ink become fields of philosophical exploration. Her paintings shape nature as a bridge to memory and transform symbols into new meanings. Culture and personal experience, silence and resistance, introspection and social commentary all intertwine in her work. The conversation with her reveals how ancient motifs of birds, flowers, and Gongshi stones can speak to our time and show how art remains alive when viewed through the lens of the present moment.
You live and work between London and Beijing, connecting two worlds through painting, ceramics, and writing. Your work both preserves and explores tradition, while opening it to contemporary perspectives. It reflects a deep commitment to materials, a philosophical curiosity, and a desire for motifs from nature and cultural heritage to speak in new ways.
In your artist statement, you describe l’entre (interstitiality) as a conceptual framework for your practice. How did you arrive at this idea, and in what ways does it influence your choice of motifs and the way you construct compositions?
My ideas about l’entre evolved as I grappled with the tension between tradition and modernity in my work. I began with bird-and-flower painting, a style rooted in traditional themes and patterns. Instead of rejecting this heritage, I was drawn to its symbols as sources of inspiration, but I wanted to approach them in ways that broadened rather than limited their meaning. This is where the framework became essential. It allows me to detach elements, such as scholar’s rocks or bamboo, from their typical symbolic roles, isolating or recontextualizing them so that they float between depiction and abstraction. Compositionally, it guides me to create spaces that resist finality: fragmented, layered, or transitional, they suggest a threshold state rather than a complete, resolved image. In this way, l’entre not only influences my motifs and compositions but also redefines what painting can be: more than just a fixed depiction of cultural symbols, it becomes a space for negotiation, where inherited histories can be unsettled, reinterpreted, and reimagined in relation to the present.
Traditional materials such as ink, mineral pigments, silk, and rice paper appear frequently in your work. What draws you to these mediums, and how do you use them to bring contemporary themes into your practice?
Ink, mineral pigments, and plant-based pigments, along with silk, have been used since ancient times, dating back to 475–420 BC. I am drawn to them not only for their durability but also for their role as philosophical vessels: they embody Taoist ideals of naturalness, balance, and unity with the cosmos. For me, working with these materials means engaging in a dialogue with a cultural synthesis where aesthetics and metaphysics are always connected. Birds and flowers painted with natural substances create a cycle of nature, humanity, and art.
Instead of hanging paintings in the traditional way, I keep them stretched on wooden frames, creating a space between the silk and the wall that highlights its translucency. Sometimes the edges absorb incidental pigments, contrasting with the delicate imagery and creating tensions between control and chance. In this way, the material itself becomes active, evolving beyond tradition into a space where historical techniques meet contemporary experimentation.
Personal experiences hold a significant place in your art. How do they find their way into your paintings and shape their narratives?
My personal experience as a female artist in a male-dominated art world naturally influences the stories I share through my work. Gender inequality often shows up as limited opportunities and subtle silencing, making it hard to speak freely. In response, I use the symbolic language of Chinese painting, where plants and stones have long been linked to human virtues. Bamboo, with its hollow, upright trunk, represents integrity, while scholar’s rocks stand for noble restraint and spiritual depth. By reinterpreting these symbols, I craft a new narrative that challenges their traditional meanings. They act as camouflage, both hiding and revealing, highlighting the tension between outward ideals and real-life experiences. In this process, the symbols no longer reinforce existing hierarchies but instead create space for diverse voices to emerge. Thus, my personal experiences are woven into the work, not through direct autobiography, but by transforming inherited imagery into sites of resistance and reinterpretation.
Travel is an important part of your research process, especially when studying historical works in their original settings. Could you share an example of a journey or an encounter with an artwork that left a strong impression on you and your practice?
In the summer of 2019, I visited the National Palace Museum in Taiwan to see the exhibition Of a Feather Flocking Together: Birds, Flowers, and Fruit in Melodic Harmony. During my studies at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2009, I was only familiar with Song dynasty masterpieces through reproductions, such as those published by Nigensha Co., Ltd. To finally see these works in person a decade later was transformative. The brushstrokes revealed subtle rhythms and textures that no reproduction could fully capture, and the exhibition’s inclusion of photographs of real birds alongside the paintings showed how artists across centuries have studied the natural world with both accuracy and imagination. The experience was deepened by the awareness of the artworks’ history of displacement, from their relocation during the Japanese invasion in 1931 to their eventual home in Taipei. Standing before them, I felt the fragility and resilience of cultural memory. This encounter made me realize that painting is not only a visual practice but also a vessel of history, migration, and survival, an understanding that continues to influence how I reinterpret traditional symbols in my own work today.
Nature – birds, plants, scholar’s rocks – appears again and again in your paintings. What meaning do these motifs hold for you today, and how do they speak to audiences in a contemporary context?
Birds, plants, and scholar’s rocks are common themes in Chinese bird-and-flower paintings. Beyond their detailed appearances, the symbols in these artworks are essential, reflecting Taoist and Confucian philosophies and guiding behavior. When people adopt these virtues as personal principles and uphold high moral standards, they help create a stable social order. I aim to reshape the story, sometimes questioning the original symbols, to show that what we are taught may be illusions. We should recognize the potential influence of these cultural symbols on society. There are no fixed symbols; people assign meaning to them as they choose.
Your paintings have been described as spaces of meditation and quiet resistance. What does this “quiet resistance” mean to you, and how would you like viewers to experience it?
Although motifs originate from traditional Chinese paintings, I am exploring how we should interpret and respond to the symbols shaped by culture and philosophy. These symbols serve as tools to influence people’s behavior and teach them to uphold high moral virtues, such as honesty, integrity, and uprightness, through personalized portrayals of plants and animals in artwork. I aim to reimagine these motifs to create an unconventional voice that encourages people to think differently. Scholar’s rocks could be depicted as playful, humorous, or greedy; the bamboo forest might symbolize a potential risk; birds, rather than humans, could dominate the world, much like the multi-perspective view in Chinese handscroll paintings, where there are no strict rules for viewing the world. I want to give traditional motifs an open-ended narrative, rather than sticking to their original symbols.
Meeting Yan Wu makes it clear that art can be a space of freedom and discovery. Her works bring together nature and culture, tradition and contemporary experience, creating places where symbols gain new energy. Each painting opens the way for fresh interpretations, both introspective and universal. The strength of her practice lies in the ability to turn what for centuries marked a cultural heritage into inspiration for new stories and contemporary voices.
