Full Name Bu Hua Hanyu Pinyin IPA [pùxwâ] | Simplified Chinese 卜桦 Wade–Giles Pu Hua | |
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Bu hua savage growth
Bu Hua (Chinese: 卜桦; born 1973) is a digital artist based in Beijing, China, best known for her flash animation works.
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Early Life and Education
The daughter of a well-known printblock artist, Bu Hua had an early introduction to art and in 1983, when only 10 years old, her painting "Sun Bird Flower and I" was selected by the China Post and issued as a stamp as part of a "children's paintings election" (special stamp T86). Following just a few years later in 1985, the Hong Kong Arts Centre hosted a small exhibition wall of Bu Hua's work.
She graduated in 1995 with a BFA from the Graduate Institute of Fine Art, Tsinghua University, Beijing, and studied in the Netherlands from September 1997 to June 1998 at the Graduate Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Academie voor Beeldende Vorming.
Career
Although Bu Hua majored in painting while at university, she discovered her passion for animation through her interest in film, and found that "Flash can help people realize their dream of being a filmmaker." An early adopter and pioneer of using Flash Animation, Bu Hua's "Cat" animation went viral with over a million downloads upon its release in 2002, winning a number of awards.
Influenced by seeing the work of William Kentridge while in Germany, she hoped to similarly combine drawing, painting and animation. In recent years she has developed a central character to a number of her video and illustrative works, based on Hua as a child. Through the perspective of this alter ego figure, her work explores the tulmultuous social landscape. “In modern China, how could you not be influenced by this fusion of West and East, this cultural invasion and ‘soft power’? I am just reflecting this reality."