Huijia Wei

Huijia Wei | You Become The Paint And I Become The Brush | 2025

You describe this project as a “conversation with your twenty-year-old self.” How has revisiting that period shaped your current artistic voice?

I look back on my twenties because I believe it was the most emotionally unstable period of my life.

During that time, my emotions were out of control, and I also let myself go. I felt like I was feeding on the pleasure and inspiration that came from pain. My desire to express myself felt like a gift from God. My words, speech, and paintings all poured out uncontrollably, and I created a large number of drafts, which became the basis of this work.

Seven years have passed, and I am now in a new stage after leaving school. I don’t have a job, but I don’t dare to stop, always keeping busy. Free time has become a kind of confusion. I fill my days with things but gain very little in return. For some time, I have been trying to keep myself healthy in body and mind. I try to control my feelings, afraid of falling into an emotional whirlpool, and I try to keep myself in a state of indifference. In fact, I have lost myself a little.

So my current artistic style is a kind of pretending: I pretend that I am facing the sharp emotions I once had, but in fact I am using thick paint to cover up the waves of the past; I pretend that my mental state is calm and relaxed, but in fact it feels like I am tied up while painting, and my heart trembles with every stroke.

What first drew you to simplify the human figure into faceless, linear forms, and how has that approach evolved since you began?

My personal style has evolved through continuous learning, with Egon Schiele being my greatest influence. My current paintings don’t seem to bear any trace of his style, but rather than that, I capture his way of depicting figures as tense and brimming with emotion.

From studying classical sketching to subjective linear simplification, to losing the structural curves of the human form, these gradual changes represent my subjective disentanglement of the concrete, real existence of “human beings,” from a specific individual to a period of time, and finally to a momentary, vague feeling and emotion.

My characters, whether joyful or sorrowful, almost always stare expressionlessly (a common theme in Schiele’s works). I believe that directly expressing laughter or crying with facial muscles makes the characters’ emotions too one-dimensional; conversely, through expressionlessness, I can convey more complex emotions.

I also tend to paint figures that maintain their gender identity while being thin and unhealthy. Whether depicting my own story or empathizing with the viewer, the feelings of being in different gender roles can be very different. Furthermore, skinny figures evoke in me a sense of exerting all my strength to preserve the last vestiges of emotion. But I think this kind of character image will continue to evolve as the self-state changes.

Huijia Wei | Unlove Apartmentt | 2025

How did your studies at Northwest University influence your path as an artist, especially in developing your own visual language?

Now that I’ve graduated, my feelings about campus are even clearer than they were during my time there.

In fact, I’ve always had a envy eye for specialized institutions like the Academy of Fine Arts, believing their faculty commitment and artistic atmosphere were unmatched. However, I attended a comprehensive institution like Northwestern University for both my undergraduate and graduate studies. While I was quite pessimistic about this when I was younger, I persevered and continued through my studies.

During that time, I encountered open-minded professors who encouraged us to explore art beyond our perceived boundaries. During this time, I read The Interviews with Marcel Duchamp. Through the relatively relaxed management, guidance from my professors, and extensive reading, I gradually escaped the grand, technically oriented visual language of traditional Chinese art education and moved towards a relaxed, personalized approach.

In my later years of graduate school, I no longer held the same obsession with other schools as I had in my early years. As a product of our environment, I was willing to accept, enjoy, and utilize it. But at the same time, I lost some of my reckless energy. This acceptance felt like a compromise, and the lines I drew resembled the random curves of a moment when tension breaks.

Your work often reflects solitude, intimacy, and longing. Do you see these states as opposites, or as deeply interconnected?

I believe these states complement each other, or rather, form a cycle. I am constantly surrounded by friends; I look for small, positive joys in my family relationships; I am searching for a lover who will love me. I think I am inherently lonely, but fortunately, I am not alone because of my longing.

In general, I value interpersonal relationships; for me, they are proof of my real existence in this world. But when my mental state is negative, everything feels isolated. I choose to give in to solitude, losing desire and naturally rejecting intimacy. It is exactly because these two are both connected and contradictory that relationships can continue to grow and hold such conflicting elements. I am always struggling with relationships—both with others and with myself.

Huijia Wei | Raising People Is Like Raising Flowers | 2025

Can you walk us through your process of transforming deeply personal emotions into visual forms?

This is both natural and hard to grasp. I have loved painting since childhood. Before I even understood emotions, I used pictures of pretty little girls to express myself, capturing joyful states of mind. At that time, I felt pure love and happiness. Later, like many teenagers, I began to turn my attention to a more sentimental way of living. Writing, though somewhat forced, became a window into my understanding of myself and the world.

Later, I received “professional training” in painting, a method I did not approve of, because it limited my perspective for a long time. However, painting became the quickest response in my mind. As I grew older, my understanding of emotion changed—from something like invisible but ever-present air, to something I could no longer live without.

So, when I am overwhelmed with emotion, images appear in my mind on their own, and my hand records them. This recording is not like writing with clear symbols, but rather the strong emotion pressed onto the tip of the pen. The state becomes the image, and the emotion becomes the brushstroke.

You use both oil paint and oil pastel. How does the material choice affect the way you capture emotional intensity?

I will roughly divide materials into water-based and oil-based, and also, from my own view, into Eastern and Western.

To me, water-based materials are Eastern. They feel more indifferent, calm, and gentle, such as Chinese ink, watercolor, and black ink. Western oil-based materials, on the other hand, give me a strong, direct, and even fierce feeling.

To me, water-based materials are Eastern. They feel more indifferent, calm, and gentle, such as Chinese ink, watercolor, and black ink. Western oil-based materials, on the other hand, give me a strong, direct, and even fierce feeling.

Instead of using oil pastels only for sketches, I now use them for finished works because they are both direct and gentle. They can hold everything visible on the canvas and set the tone for the whole composition. Oil pastels are like the highlights in classical painting. I love their free brushstrokes, which strongly catch the eye and express emotion on the canvas, just like my own expectations of myself, and they exist in a real and solid way.

Huijia Wei | Love Hotel | 2025

Do you hope your paintings resonate with viewers on a universal level, or do you prefer them to remain highly personal?

I don’t think resonance and personalization conflict. On the one hand, it’s about whether my communication connects with the public’s state of mind, and on the other hand, whether my communication is authentic.

The former is undoubtedly true because people are products of their environment. My feelings are by no means unique to those who lived through the same period as me. Resonance doesn’t come from me penetrating others’ hearts, but rather from others digging out their own memories through my expression. Whether this resonance is universal or not is not particularly important to me. Everyone is different, and I believe resonance is a momentary eye contact in a crowd.

As for the latter, I believe the fundamental tone of an artist’s creation is their own. Even if this process involves endless learning or imitation, both the starting point and the result are personal. Personalization is authenticity: observing oneself, facing oneself directly, and recording oneself. And the self, in turn, emerges from the environment; it’s just that the environmental elements we subjectively capture differ. When people capture similar elements, the “special” individual is no longer alone.