At first glance, Xindi Wu's paintings are attractive with their colorful and delicate brushstrokes, but upon closer inspection, one can feel a hint of unease. For Xindi, painting is both the process and the result of her thinking. In this interview, Xindi talks about her unique connection with existential anxiety, trees, and skulls.
“你注视着我的时候，我无言以对“
Oil on Canvas, 2024
Ash Wei: In your autobiography, you mentioned the contradiction between subject and object that you experienced, as well as the intertextuality between the artist and the trees; can you take a certain work or a group of works as an example to talk about how existentialism and personal memory are woven into your painting expression?
Xindi Wu: I am a very anxious person, but I have never found a way to solve my anxiety. Until I read Heidegger*, he mentioned that when we are born, we face a world that we cannot control. We can only accept what others give us in a very helpless state and can only passively obey the rules set by others. Heidegger also proposed a concept called Dasein (translated as "being-there"). As we grow up, we have to keep asking: How to find the Dasein that we lost by following the rules of others? How to solve the existential crisis caused by helplessness? My answer is: solve it in planning. Since I am anxious because I am facing a world that I cannot control, I will create a world that I can control, that is, my painting world.
The subject-object contradiction between me and trees comes from the inspiration I got from Sartre's text. I originally just liked to look at trees, but when I read Sartre's "Others and Hell*, the gaze will produce a series of contradictions", I realized that the way I look at trees is like the way others look at me. The gaze of others distorts your space and makes you objectify yourself. The gaze I cast on the tree is me objectifying it, and the gaze of others on me is others objectifying me.
Note:
1. Heidegger proposed the concept of "thrown" (Geworfenheit), emphasizing that human individuals are placed in the world without choice, and must understand themselves and make choices in the existing environment (see "Being and Time", 1927).
2. "Others are Hell" comes from Sartre's play "Confinement" (Huis Clos, 1944).
This painting (above) was created in August and September last year. It shows the most intuitive way of expressing my dialogue with trees. I am looking at a tree, and the tree is on fire. Fire itself is a symbol of vitality, but a tree on fire becomes a bad omen. The corpse hanging on it is also an obvious bad symbol. When you face this tree, you look at it and it looks at you. Below is a metaphorical human skull.
“残像”
Watercolor on Panel, 2024
AW: Do you have moments of losing control during the creative process? How do you deal with it?
XW: I have control over the steps of creation. When I want to transform the image in my mind into reality, I will first make a lot of black and white composition drafts, then select a draft, and then make a lot of color drafts. The final one I choose is the real draft I will use as a reference. However, it is possible to fail to realize the visual image in my mind. First of all, it has something to do with the artist's own ability. The stronger the ability, the more freely the artist can express, and the higher the upper limit of creation. Secondly, many times I don't know what my image will look like at the beginning. For example, I wanted to use dark colors to paint the lake at first to express the endless and ignorant fear, but when I was painting, I thought that red could best express sadness or pain, and I continued to paint and found that brown seemed to be more appropriate. In the process of exploration, my thinking and the actual images I created influenced and projected each other. This process made me feel that I was not completely out of control, and I was still moving forward on the right steps. The more I paint, the more positive feedback I get, and the frustration of not being able to express completely will decrease as my ability and experience grow. However, this negative feedback will always exist. I often can't finish painting one of the three or four paintings halfway through. Because the more you paint, the better your expression requirements will also rise. This feeling of "words can't express your meaning" must run through the entire artist's career. Maybe I can't paint well today, so I won't paint. I will come back to paint tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. As long as I keep painting, I will definitely achieve a certain result. The result I finally achieved may not be the effect I imagined at the beginning, but the product of a compromise after comprehensive consideration, but this is also within my acceptable range, and this feeling will not make me anxious.
“终曲 II”
纸上石板印刷, 2024
“悬而未决的旅途”
铜板蚀刻, 2023
“聆听”
木板上水彩, 2023
“为未曾踏足所做的习作”
木板上水粉, 2023
AW: What does the skull in your painting represent? Does it have the same narrative function as trees in your work?
XW: The skull is a symbol of my existential anxiety, a symbol in my paintings. I use visual transformation to let the audience see me solving my anxiety. This anxiety is not caused by my interview tomorrow or my bus tomorrow. It is not a short-term anxiety caused by a specific reason. It has existed since the moment I was born. The head is the first part of the human body to come into the world when a human is born (in the case of normal birth). In the initial stage of our life experience, that is, when we are babies, the volume of the head actually accounts for the largest part of the body. But when we grow up, the rest of the body becomes larger, and the proportion of the head to the whole body changes. The skull symbolizes this original anxiety, which has been with me as I grew up, and my interactions with people gradually became a metaphor for me and trees.
My paintings are mainly landscapes and urban landscapes, and my existential crisis is like a background color, which I fill in the scenes I see. Some of these scenes are what I have seen in real life, and some are what I have seen online. I want to recreate the feeling I have when I see the landscape, which may be sad or angry. Different feelings determine what colors I use to express. Many people who have seen my paintings have commented that my paintings show an unstable state under the calm surface, and the reason for the uneasiness is that you don’t know what the inner state is.
“吞噬我，拥抱我”
Oil on Canvas, 2024
XW: For example, this painting is actually a tree stump I saw in Olympic National Park in Washington. Because the center of the stump is very dark, I am not sure whether the stump wants to hug me or swallow me, so I want to convey the sense of crisis brought by this uncertainty and use the painting to show a certain moment I captured. Many elements in the painting, including the composition and color, are hinting that something is about to happen, and I don’t know whether it is good or bad. There is this kind of tense emotion that is about to explode. The hands made of branches are like people being strangled by the neck when they are anxious and can’t breathe. I am not painting from memory, but recreating my feelings and emotions about this specific scene, just like my other paintings.
“焦虑湖”
Oil on Canvas, 2024
AW: Do you have fixed emotional associations with colors? If you want to express the same emotion, will you use the same color to achieve it?
XW: The connection between color and emotion is more like an abstract starting point. For example, I would like red to express pain because red is the color of blood. But the emotion conveyed by the painting in the end is more holistic. The picture shows the cooperation of all colors, not necessarily in a syncopated way, and what color represents what emotion.
AW: What does oil painting mean to you as your creative medium? Have you ever considered trying other media or multi-media creation?
XW: The reason for choosing oil painting as the main creative medium is very specific: it can meet the needs of large-scale creation. I like to lie on a detail for a long time, and then step back to look at the whole, and that moment will be very refreshing. This kind of refreshing feeling can only be brought by large-scale canvas. As I said before, after finalizing the small draft, I don’t have to worry about the structure diagram or color matching, and I have more energy to think about how I want to tell the story of this small piece. I also use acrylic, which is very convenient for bottom painting. You can create different textures by adding various media to acrylic paint. But acrylic dries too quickly. I want my paintings to have a thick and thin texture, and there should be a lot of contrast between the pigments. If I use acrylic to paint such a thin effect, after I finish painting a small area, I move to another place, and when I come back to make changes, the original place has already dried.
XW: In addition to acrylic, I also use many other materials. For example, this painting (above) uses gauze, sand, and mica. If I want to add more texture when the base is already laid, I will use oil painting media, such as Galkyd (alkyl resin medium), Liquin (another alkyl resin) or other gel mediums. This gel medium takes a long time to dry. A thin layer takes two or three days. For example, I waited for two months for this painting, and the inner layer is still soft. Oil paintings have this kind of charm. The reason for adding these textures to this painting is that I want to express a kind of decayed beauty, a bit like a person mineralizing or crystallizing. It looks very shiny from a distance, but if you look closely, you will find that it feels like a bunch of flies are flying around.
““未曾踏足””
Oil on Canvas, 2024
““终曲 III””
纸上水粉, 2024
AW: Regarding art and self-healing, you expressed that you are completely free in your own creative world. Have you tried to apply the experience you have learned in the process of painting to other places? How do you think art creation can help creators heal themselves?
XW: From my personal perspective, the influence of things should be two-way, but the influence of painting on my life is relatively one-way. Life will affect the visual effects I want to express. For example, I realized that the only constant thing in life is change itself, so I want to bring this reflection into my painting and create some fleeting effects. I would like to bring some hints of wind, or express some casual and loose brush textures. In turn, the picture itself actually reflects my emotions most directly. Sometimes I think I will go crazy if I don’t paint anymore, and then I feel much better after painting. Painting is sometimes an outlet for me, so my works are very emotional. These paintings are my reflections and understanding of each stage of life. The paintings of each stage are scenes that touch me in life. For example, I painted a lot of red water because I firmly believed that red water was blood at that time. When I look at these paintings again, I can clearly feel the extreme anger and panic I felt at that time.
INTERVIEWER: YUXUAN WEI
CURATOR: YUXUAN WEI, KE ZHANG
EDITOR: CHENYU LIN
GRAPHIC DESIGNER: YUXUAN WEI
Xindi Wu
At a safe distance, the beauty of trees deeply attracts me. However, if I get too close, it is likely to bring unexpected or unpleasant shocks. For example, when I stand under the canopy, a spider is likely to fall on my nose; when I hug the trunk or lean against it, the sharp bark is likely to scratch my skin. I long for closeness, but I often hesitate because of the fear of getting hurt. In this relationship between me and trees, trees become objects, and I am always the subject. In Sartre's "Being and Nothingness", he explored the process and results of the loss of subjectivity under the gaze and the eyes. Whenever I observe trees, this concept always resonates with me. Under my gaze, trees are watched and judged, and they lose their subjectivity, just as I lose my subjectivity when others look at me. The tips of the branches become arms, and the posture of opening the arms with force seems desperate and defensive.
At that moment, I turned into a tree. I couldn't tell whether I was afraid to retreat or long for closeness, and I couldn't tell whether the eyes of others were kind or malicious. This unspeakable contradiction was poured into my paintings. In my current artistic creation, I try to combine personal emotions with narrative landscapes. I will draw inspiration from the Internet or my own photography works, and then I will return to the studio and paint with memory and photo references to construct a personal narrative. In the process of painting, I will recall how the landscape made me feel at that time, and express this impression through colors and symbolic elements. When I feel calm, I will use bright, soft or bright colors to express a peaceful atmosphere. When I am angry or excited, I often use harsh or sharp colors to reveal potential violence. At the same time, the skull as a symbolic image appears repeatedly in the picture, connecting the narrative of the picture and revealing my existential crisis. I think that feeling anxious is because we are facing a world that we cannot take action on.
As a child, we can only follow the instructions of others-this instruction comes from parents, teachers, and the authority of the older generation who are older than me. This world existed before we were born. This world was constructed by these predecessors and authorities. Since we were born, we are helpless against it. We grew up in such a world where we have no way to take action to change it. We can only obey. In this obedience and helplessness, we lose ourselves. The loss of self is the source of anxiety. Anxiety is like a shadow, existing in every moment of my life. However, when I paint, I reconstruct a world in my paintings. In that world, I will not feel anxious and will not be lost again, because this world is completely from my hands and dominated by me. I don’t need to listen to anyone’s instructions to grow. In this world, anxiety can be relieved and cured. Painting is an exploration and healing of my emotional and psychological state again and again. I explore the possibilities that emotional and mental states can bring me visually, and embed anxiety into it to complete a process of self-exploration and healing.