Feifan Hu

Feifan Hu(b.1998) was born in China and now works in London. Feifan works across textiles and drawing. Her practice often pivots around issues of family, gender and human-animal relationships. She also questions the stereotypical perception of textile and craft. She is interested in contradictions, both pleasant and melancholic, cute and uncanny. Her work features a sense of childlike female characters, humorously using symbolic meanings from nature, culture, and memory. She narrates a visual language between vulnerability and defiance.

For all enquiries please email feifan.hu@network.rca.ac.uk

-GMT/ CET group exhibition, London, 2021

-New designer, London, 2020

Family Tree

Living in multiculturalism, the contradiction of being passive and expressive deepens the sense of lost identity and power of discourse. The project captures the family power dynamics and reveals the awkward taboos we usually avoid through knitting and performance.

Family Tree is a textile series that explores the multifaceted, complicated emotional connection between family members culturally and socially.

The project used strawberries and grass as motifs to refer to fragility, yet they become symbols of rebellion by playing with their Chinese characters.The work subverts the ubiquitous representation of wool and towel into something rude, functionless and inappropriate.

Family Tree illustrates a narrative of family structure and its social situation. The project is between explicitness and ambiguousness, not just love or hate. It is a dialogue happening in an intimate relationship and self-realisation and self-recognition. Feifan aims to subvert the gentle impression of textile, confront authorities and inequalities, to serve an unpleasant yet cute protest.

Special Thanks to Fangxinyue Wang, all photos and videos were taken by her.

Towelling transforms the simple act of folding into a performance that narrative an intimate moment between a mother and a daughter.

The performer's memory of towel animals was the seed for the project, inspired by the actions of folding a piece of towel and the secretive soft tension between mother and daughter.

The printed towels capture memory fragments or objects that appeared in the performer's childhood. The cursed words refer to the conflicts. By folding the towels, the anger will be hiding away.

Full video 71mins