Bio

As a typical member of humanity, who once was a part of nature, I have lost the ability to coexist with it. I grew up in a city in the desert, with no pets at home and no trace of nature outside my window. Stepping out the door, I found myself in a crowded residential area, with a few carefully planted small trees. I thought that was nature. Whenever I wanted to get close to it, I would go to a park where there were more concrete blocks than trees and gaze intently at those trees—each one unique in personality because of its rarity.

At home, we had a study filled with Disney magazines and Tom and Jerry DVDs, as well as The Red and the Black and all seven volumes of Harry Potter. I am a product of China’s era of globalization and consumerism, deeply fascinated by human-made objects and intensely curious about how things are manufactured. Man-made items and shopping malls were my most familiar playmates and amusement parks. The first time I left the grid-lined city and stepped into nature, I fainted. I had severe calcium deficiency—not because of anything unusual, but simply from spending too much time indoors. Until college, I didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. A moth could make me scream, let alone a rat. Now you understand why pest control services exist in big cities.

My father was in the military, and my grandmother worked in a hospital. Order and cleanliness were sacred to us. Artificial objects—plastic, ceramics, glass, metalware— sparkled with cleanliness, arranged neatly in cabinets. I looked at them, handled them, dusted them, and found comfort in doing so. This beautiful, new world healed both me and my family.

A life distant from nature and rooted in a densely populated, commercial society became my foundation. Mice in Disney stories were adorable, bees didn’t sting, and lions and tigers were humanlike, living in a faraway, unreachable wilderness. KFC and McDonald’s were fresh experiences for my taste buds, and the jolt of cola as it slid down my throat marked my childhood memories. The China of the ’90s was prosperous, busy, thrilling, with everything brand new—just like my newly begun life.

Mobile phones, computers, video recorders, PlayStation, iPads, e-banking, cameras, facial recognition—all of it recorded and regulated us, reminding me of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. How am I any different—a new breed of humanity, shaped by pop culture and fed by genetically modified food? Prometheus created man, man creates Prometheus, and soon the mysteries of gene replication and quantum entanglement will be revealed. But then what? The god is created, but it is their god. Where are we ultimately headed?

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Hua Wang (b.Xinjiang,China) works and lives in Beijing and Berlin. At the age of 15, Hua Wang began art studies at the secondary school affiliated to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 2012, she graduated from the Central Saint Martin School of Art and Design in London. In 2014, she based herself in the ancient Silk Road City Jingdezhen, renowned for its porcelain productionthat stretches back more than 1,700 years. She then gained admittance to the Royal College of Art in London and continued her studies in contemporary art.

Wang Hua’s artistic experiments can be seen as both a material testing ground and a site for conceptual exploration. She believes that “the layers and significance contained within individual cultural backgrounds and the issues of globalized consumerism are often richer than what is immediately visible. My work is built on a fascination with artificial objects and the resulting surreal interpretations and reflections.”

Wang Hua excels at using various media to articulate the philosophical questions that interest her, such as reflections on anthropocentrism and the upheaval of what it means to be human brought about by technological advancement. In her work, she employs all techniques to respond to and contemplate the intertwining of artificial and divine (natural) entities.