Wu Jiaru

WU JIARU (b 1992) 

Wu Jiaru grew up in a typical Guangdong city in southern China, an area shaped by the entertainment, aesthetic and lifestyle influences that entered the mainland through Hong Kong in the 1990s. Within her practice, Jiaru examines these cultural exchanges between mainland China and Hong Kong alongside questions of identity and belonging through a variety of mediums, including sculpture, video and painting.

In To the Naiad's House (2022), Jiaru's first exhibition with Flowers Gallery, she constructs a memory palace, drawing on her own childhood memories of a room in the restaurant her mother owned (known as a Jiu Lou). Functioning as both a restaurant and entertainment venue, Jiaru describes the Jiu Lou as an aesthetic hybrid inundated with the optimism of economic expansion and the desire for individual freedom brought on by social transformation.

Wu Jiaru received her dual BA degrees in Fine Arts and English Language from Tsinghua University in 2014, and her MFA from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong in 2017. Her work is in the collection of M+, Hong Kong. She recently received the New York fellowship grant from the Asian Cultural Council.