Bao Hongyan

Chinese Contemporary Art by Bao Hongyan - The Conversation

2020

Bao Hongyan is a Chinese female artist born in 1994 who lives and works in Nanjing, China. Her works revolve around emotions, self and gender, providing a unique interpretation of the surrounding environment and events that occur. Her works express a certain perspective that reflects her worldview. This creative approach has gone from being completely subconscious to gradually becoming self-aware, constantly learning and improving. She projects a rebellious mindset to examine the conflicting relationships between oneself and society, strongly emphasising individual subjectivity. Hongyan's works are influenced to a degree by her own ethnic culture in terms of colour, which is exhibited in her colour application and freedom of composition. For example, blue, white, red, yellow, green, etc. often appear in her works and are sometimes represented by different color symbols to represent her intentions. However, this cultural lens to Hongyan's works is somewhat tangential. Her works are also influenced by Impressionism, Cubism, surrealism, expressionism and constructivism, which are themes that are more consistently manifested. Her symbol formation was initially inspired by Giacometti. Initially, her subconscious feelings are transposed onto paper. Gradually, this way of expressing thoughts permits a more exaggerated somatic approach, which has been both liberating and fascinating for her. This constant evolving symbolism is very much an indentifying evocation of Hongyan’s works to date.