Syan Hu
About
Syan Hu (b. 1998, Shanghai) is a trilingual visual artist (Chinese, English, Japanese) based in London, currently pursuing an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art. His interdisciplinary practice integrates photography, sound, and bio-material experimentation, drawing on themes of impermanence, ecological decay, and post-human transformation.
Influenced by the aesthetics of mono no aware and Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, Hu’s work embraces the quiet beauty of erosion, the fragmentary, and the unspoken. He works with dissected reptiles, crustacean shells, mycelium, and fungal residues—materials that carry traces of life, rupture, and silent regeneration. His images evoke a poetic stillness, where time is marked not by events, but by organic transformation.
Hu’s practice is conceptually aligned with new materialist theory, particularly Jane Bennett’s notion of “vibrant matter.” Rather than treating objects as inert, he frames biological remnants as agents in a slow dialogue with the viewer—inviting affective resonance rather than symbolic interpretation.
In his recent project 「殻」Kara, Hu expands his photographic language into a multisensory installation. Collaborating with ambient sound, he incorporates Mongolian khöömii(throat singing) as a low-frequency, embodied vibration that gives voice to the unspeakable: the shell, the scar, the fungal bloom. The work resists narration, instead constructing a spatial ecology—where image, matter, and sound breathe together in quiet cycles of dissolution and return.
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