Xinwu XuHOMEWORKSBIO/CVCONTACT

Born in Jiangxi, Xu Xinwu’s years of migration and nomadic life have led him to reconsider the underlying condition of his Hakka ancestry. Beneath the experience of migration lies a persistent awareness of being “elsewhere”: one’s roots remain suspended in the wind; temporary residence becomes a norm; and identity is defined by the self rather than determined by place. One remains acutely aware of the world while calmly accepting this state of suspension, existing almost as an “outsider”.


The figures in Xu Xinwu’s paintings are neither drawn from life nor based on specific visual references. They emerge instead at the threshold between “traces” and “dreams”: at times, as the contours left behind when an old wall has peeled away; at others, as fleeting shadows passing through the half-awake state of late night, impossible to hold in place. These remnants of reality possess an inherent instability and incompleteness—as though they had once existed in the real world, only to be repeatedly blurred by time and memory. This is the basis for Xu’s definition of his practice as “Revelatory Realism Painting”, a form of painting in which reality emerges through its traces.


The figures in Xu’s paintings are marked by lowered gazes and emotionally neutral expressions. They are neither angry nor sorrowful, and they do not conform to any predetermined emotional script. This is not, however, a capitulation to nihilism. Rather, they stand calmly within the absurd, with an unperformed honesty, becoming the most authentic “outsider”. Xu sees this sense of detachment as an echo of the contemporary spiritual predicament. The “wind” that never ceases within the paintings is a physical reality beyond reason, an unruly force that tears at the heavy robes, causing the figures to tilt, lose their sense of weight, and become distorted. The robe is both the point at which the body bears the force of the wind and a burden that cannot be shed. In its struggle with the wind, the body acquires a quiet resilience. The enormous masks that occasionally appear, deliberately placed within the compositions, represent the “gaze of the other” imposed by social discipline. They reflect the repression of the individual under the collective gaze—being categorized, judged, and assigned a place within the group. The figures neither flee nor argue. They wield silence as a blade, carving, between wind and nothingness, an outline of themselves that cannot be erased.

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