REVIEW: XINGXIN HU AT MAMA SALON
TEXT BY BETH MCKENZIE
Installation view: Xingxin Hu at MAMA Salon. Photo by Tom Carter. Courtesy of MAMA and the artist.
Memory is a mysterious thing. Sometimes the most mundane of objects can provoke visceral flashes of recognition: a single black hair left on a pillowcase, a pair of white socks, the stick of a lollipop protruding from pursed lips. These are just some of the subjects showcased in the paintings of Xingxin Hu, whose solo show was hosted by the MAMA art collective last weekend. Fascinated by the ordinary, Hu seeks to document the ways in which we project meaning onto seemingly insignificant signs. In producing poetry of the everyday, Hu extends the human psyche to the physical world and in doing so, finds what it means to be human.
How do you feel when the day is done, 2025, oil on canvas. Courtesy of MAMA and the artist.
Born in China and undergoing her artistic training in London (where she now lives), much of Hu’s early inspiration was taken from film stills as she transformed fragments of her own experience into cinematic images. The cliche that everyone is the star of their own movie may seem gauche, but in our world of documenting and curating our lives on social media, it perhaps bears some thought. Rather than making herself the protagonist however, Hu takes objects or signs as her focal point, imbuing them with deeper significance, much like the filmmaker dictates symbolism within a scene.
Left: Chamomile, 2025, oil on canvas. Right: The Science of Sleep, 2025, oil on canvas.Courtesy of MAMA and the artist.
Hu is not alone in her emphasis on the inanimate. Her work fits into a rich history of still-life painting that takes commonplace objects as its subject matter. At times, one is reminded of the great Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, whose muted still lifes rejected the chaos of modern life by demanding meditative viewing; Hu’s curiously titled Massive Production possesses a similar tranquility in its colour and tone. Works such as How do you feel when the day is done? are similarly calming in their use of pastels. However, the overwhelming majority of works from the MAMA show opt for a citrus palette, a choice that not only denotes the artist’s distinctive style but also heightens the sensory viewing experience, the colour being reminiscent of the bitter pang of nostalgia.
Massive Production, 2025, oil on canvas. Courtesy of MAMA and the artist.
Whilst her minimalist use of colour offers a partial sense of harmony, there is a tension in Hu’s work that arises from the tight cropping of her compositions. By no means is this a new technique; cropping was regularly adopted by Impressionist painters who in turn were inspired by Japanese printmaking. Cropped compositions added a spot of drama and visual interest to the frame, in-keeping with the themes of spectacle and entertainment being explored in art of the time. Similarly for Hu, tight compositions - likely influenced by her love of cinema - add suspense in the guise of intimacy, forcing viewers to get up close and personal with her subjects, particularly as their canvases are often quite small. Take Gold Velvet for instance; not only is the subject - a human torso - an erogenous symbol on its own, the zoomed-in perspective is inescapably confrontational and imbues the image with meaning, desire, contemplation, and excitement. It is in this way that Hu’s subject, no matter how banal, is given significant weight.
Gold Velvet, 2025, oil on canvas. Courtesy of MAMA and the artist.
In a small but mighty show, Hu manages to create a film reel in miniature, a series of images that capture some of the most poignant aspects of her life and, in turn, encourages the viewer to reflect on their own inner world. Hosted in the reimagined living space of MAMA Salon, the domestic setting befits Hu’s emphasis on quotidian fragments and cements the personal as the setting of her artistic expression. At first glance, it may appear to be a random collection of symbols, but, as is often the case in art, it is within the specificity of the personal that we find universalisms that expose our humanity.