Art Collectors Magazine issue 108

Undiscovered

 Jingwei Bu: I am the studio

by Lisa Slade

When asked how much time she spends in the studio, South Australian artist Jingwei Bu responds with ‘I’m always in the studio, I am the studio’.

Hers is a practice described as relational and performative, where the index or trace of the act may include drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture or installation. Moreover, Jingwei describes her works, which range in price from $1,000 to $8,000, as ‘still living’, such is their direct relationship with her art acts.

This approach is articulated in a question she posed over our tea ceremony meeting, when she asked: Where does a line begin and where does it end? Does it begin in space, in the body or on the page? In her Life Maps series, Jingwei thinks through drawing – her time-based mark making becomes a way of mapping experience and also a means of offering the viewer the gift of meditation.

Jingwei’s biography provides further clues to the nature and motivations behind her work. Born in Inner Mongolia, China, in 1973 with Mandarin as her mother tongue (her mother was a language teacher), Jingwei spent her childhood in rural Mongolia and her early adulthood working as a journalist in Beijing. She moved to Germany for eight years, then in 2010 she relocated to Adelaide, where she now lives with her family.

As a child, Jingwei asked her mother about her birth – her mother replied that she caught her daughter in the river, scooping her up from the water. Today Jingwei describes her approach as following the flow. This flow has led to her to study at Adelaide Central School of Art, to her being awarded a prize in The Hospital Research Foundation Group Creative Health Art Prize and most recently to her receiving a Guildhouse Catapult mentorship with renowned sculptor and painter Lindy Lee.