Hussel Zhu

HUSSEL ZHU

Hussel Zhu is a Rotterdam-based visual artist working across painting, drawing, installation, performance and video. His practice explores misalignment between language and belonging across different social and cultural systems.

In the show ‘Four Ninety Degree Angles’, Hussel showcased a number of paintings created on Chinese Xuan paper, exploring situations of discomfort and adaptation through the depictions of ordinary city animals. These animals, including frogs, monkeys and birds, live closely with us and are dependent on our shared urban environment, but are also very much restricted by it. Like a pigeon, whose claws can become entangled in hair, plastic or other waste, causing often unnoticed injuries. Zhu feels, as a Chinese person living in the Netherlands, he can recognise some of his own discomfort in that of the animals depicted in his works, constantly switching between languages, behaviors and social environments.