Ropes and orchids
Even though jadeite has a Mohs hardness of 7, Hu has no problem carving out delicate knotted ropes.
Ropes, in fact, are an important motif in his work. They are made from the same material that makes up a baby's swaddling, and they are a close relative of the strings that fasten a cradle to a pole. And very importantly, for Hu they hearken back to a harrowing experience from his childhood. When he was four or five years old, robbers broke into their home while only he and his mother were there. Holding her son close, she told the intruders, "Take anything you want. Just leave my boy alone."
He never forgot his mother's courage, and in Life's Beginning (2008), the knotted rope stands strong and upright in the center, symbolizing the supple strength of a mother's love. Two orchids grow out of the rope, one wilted and one in full bloom, symbolizing the circle of life and death. The luxuriant orchid roots spring from the rope and wrap around it, while different life forms cling to the orchid stem: a cicada emerging from its shell, an insect preparing to take off in flight, and flitting butterflies. All these different manifestations of the bounty of life, as the rope reminds us, derive from the power of motherly love.
Says Hu, "Creation is central to my life. It's a medium that I use to contemplate existence." And orchids, a recurring theme in his art, are an indelible part of his childhood memories. He often saw wild orchids as a boy. When he and his buddies spotted them high up in towering trees, they would try to clamber up and pick them, but they often slipped and fell to the ground. For Hu, the precious value of orchids derives both from the difficulty of getting one, and also from what they tell us about nature.
The flower often hangs suspended from a tree or cliff, its petals, leaves, and stem all pointing downward, depending on stout roots to hold tightly on to a tree trunk or rock face. "In order to survive, the roots of an orchid must be strong and resilient. Life is like that, clinging on stubbornly in adverse circumstances, and attempting despite all odds to become even stronger."
With In Praise of Life, part of the "Nine Fields of Orchids" series, Hu escapes the bounds of traditional jadeite art by incorporating the very modern motif of a skull into the work. By combining the skull with the orchid theme, Hu successfully creates imagery with an understated poetic sensibility. Having studied Buddhist doctrine seriously from a young age, he often asks himself: Wherein lies the value of life? When a person comes to the end of life, what gift has he left for himself?
"Coming into this life is cause for joy, to be sure, but is leaving it necessarily to be feared? Our bodies do not last for more than a century. In the end, do we leave behind a beautiful orchid? Or just a fleshless pile of bones?" In his works, besides venturing into territory where Eastern culture would rather not set foot, Hu also turns his back on the "in with the good luck, out with the bad" thinking that has underlain jadeite art for hundreds of years.
Eyes on the Prize, 23 x 24 x 15 cm, 2006An imperial green praying mantis sits on an orchid leaf, wings retracted, pincers poised and ready to make a meal of a nearby black cicada. But little does the mantis know that a bird behind is thinking the mantis itself would be a tasty treat. A life-and-death drama is set to unfold!