Life Maps, 2016 - 2022. Photo by Ying He and Prolab Image
LIFE MAPS
Life Maps is Bu’s ongoing exploration on drawing as a performative movement of the hands. The marks, numbers, letters and lines carry the intuitive motion performed on the paper. The endurance of the movement uses the paper as a stage and as a boundary for action. The results of the performances are either purely intuitive or an action for a reflection on a life event. The repetition of motion is like meditation and ritual. The repetition is never the same.
EXHIBITION ESSAY BY TANNER MULLER
‘Bu creates with an intuitive approach to meditatively awaken the spirit and conceptualise the tangled web of her memories. Every piece is constructed through an intricate and layered mark making process. Repeated lines, shading, spirals, and number sequencing are among the handful of stylistic gestures used to translate emotion and memory onto paper.’
—— Tanner Muller
Life Maps series of works and its expanded experimental approaches have been exhibited at following spaces:
- Light Square Gallery, SA(2023), The Hospital Research Foundation Group - Creative Health Art Prize finalists exhibition, - Sauerbier House,SA, SALA Festival(2023) - ArtPod, GuildHouse and The City of Adelaide(2022) - Centre for Creative Health, SA(2022) - The Mill Adelaide, SA(2021) - SALA Festival(2019) at Yellow Gallery, The Women’s and Children’s Hospital, SA(2019)
‘Connecting the Connections’ (9 panels), 2022-2023, pencil on tea soaked timber boards. 210 x 180 cm. The top six panels are permanent collection of The Hospital Research Foundation after winning the Emerging Artist category of the THRF Group-Creative Health Art Prize. Photo by Sam Robert
Mapping as visual journal of the human connections built through the tea ceremonies and tea pouring performances as well as the awareness of various ways of human connections over one year. (Tea Project: Pouring Tea Until It Is All Evaporation)
Life Maps-DesireLines, Oil paint and pen on glass, 2023.Photo by Sam Robert
Mapping the algorithmic desire lines on glass, metaphoric depiction of human activities in digitalised contemporary
Life.
Four months of mapping and mark making on glass windows at ArtPod, Sa,2022
Mapping on the glass windows as a process based temporary mural at ArtPod artist residency Stop And See, responding texts by the writer Eleen Deprez in 2022.