Hu Liu

After having devoted several years to traditional Chinese painting, Hu Liu then chose graphite as her only material. Using pencil as her main medium,  Hu Liu often takes several months to finish a single drawing. Her works that are created from multiple layers of pencil marks weave together an opaque, almost abyssal surface, in which substance and space, light and darkness enter into a zone of indistinction. Her work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions in China, mainland Europe and the United Kingdom.  In 2013, she received the New Youth Pioneer Artist of the Year award.

In 2018 and 2021, the Fondation Cartier presented a number of her canvases during the group exhibitions at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai (A Beautiful Elsewhere and Trees) and at the Triennale Milano (Les Citoyens). Hu Liu also took part in the exhibition Le Souffle de l’architecte in which the Fondation Cartier gave Bijoy Jain free rein, in 2024. Designed as a place of exchange between architect Bijoy Jain, artist Hu Liu and ceramist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, this exhibition conceived the  ritual mastery of gesture as uniting them. Several works of Hu Liu feature in the Fondation’s collection, notably Grass (2015), Sea (2015) and Wave (2015).