Born in 1989 in Sichuan Province, China, He Bo is a practitioner of photographic image-based art, writer, educator and curator. Now live and work in Chengdu, China. He Bo’s past artistic practice is mainly concerned with the re-creation of ready-made images and its theories, the narrative relationship between images and texts, the barriers to communication in the context of war, disaster and violence, the fictionality of archives and memory, and the function and effect of photographic images in the construction of history and the operation of power. Collaboration with others and the participation of audiences are important aspects of He Bo’s practice. Currently, He Bo’s artistic practice attempts to deal with the topics of memory, post-memory, trauma and aftermath in the context of the history of Sichuan. 

His works have been exhibited in Paris, Amsterdam, The Hague, New York, London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Locarno, Islamabad, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Bandung, Inchon, as well as at Lianzhou Foto Festival and Jimei×Arles International Photo Festival, among many other places in China.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I come from Sichuan Province in the southwest of China, a place renowned for its hot pot. I have pursued two master’s programs in photography, one at Beijing Film Academy, China and the other at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), the Netherlands. I also had a short-term exchange at University of Paris 8, France. I used to be an editor for Chinese Photography magazine and now I teach at a university in Sichuan.

I became interested in photography during my undergraduate years. When I was in France at the end of 2014, I was deeply influenced by the prevalent phenomenon of re-creation of found images, and began to form my own thoughts and practices in this direction. At the same time, the shooting incident at Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015 directly prompted me to start expressing violence through artistic practices based on photographic images.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

Most of the time, each of my works follows certain routine, but in the next one, I try not to replicate the specific routine from the previous one. 

My creative process often has a relatively emotional starting point, but it is generally organized into a more rational structure or logic, and then I search for appropriate creative methods, media, materials and ways of presentation. For example, Since Then, No One Has Talked with You (2016). It was a work I created when I rethought stance, communication barriers and the meaning of life and death after being shocked and even frightened by the terrorist attack on that satirical magazine office in Paris. It emphasizes what I should do when, as an outsider, I cannot directly empathize with the suffering of others (as Susan Sontag said). Another example is Several Echoes of March 8 in 2018, my motivation was the shock and confusion brought by the mystery of the disappearance of the MH370 aircraft, but in the specific work, I wanted to explore how we try to understand and experience “post-truth”. Of course, I also have few works that come from complete spontaneity, such as Farewell to the Stream (of…)  made during my residency in Switzerland in 2022. The mountainous landscape of Switzerland instantly reminded me of the similar terrain in the west of my hometown, as well as the countless memories and experiences I had while traveling there with friends. Such memories and emotions directly led me to immediately formulate the creative strategy for this work without much deliberation.

Your work often engages with found images—what inspired you to use these images initially, and in what ways do you work with them?

In 2014, I began to be interested in old photos and those images from daily life that couldn’t be regarded as works of art. I collected some old photos from the second-hand market and also took out the photos from my family to look at and scan. On the other hand, at that time, I didn’t really want to take photos anymore. I gradually stopped liking to present some of my daily photos as works of art, always feeling that something was lacking.

The opportunity to start the practice with found images came from the aforementioned 2014 trip to France. At that time, there were many exhibitions and events in Paris that were discussing the topic of “re-creation of found images”, involving amateur images entering the artistic context, family photos, collage and new applications of photographic montage, as well as the noise of the massive image archives generated in the internet age. 

These phenomena, along with the discussions related to “power of viewing”, that emerged at a high frequency in the art creation and theoretical research in France, have excited me quite a bit, sparking my creative desire: Besides the various existing (and even rapidly spreading) strategies, what other possibilities are there for using found photos as creative materials? 

Over the years, I have tried to use found images as materials for composite images (Since Then, No One Has Talked with You), combined with altered family photos and text to create fictional archives (Selfiers: Sealed with Images, with Xu Lei, 2016), to reconstruct others’ photos through text(The Extending Punctums, 2013-2015; Where Can I Wish You Happy?, 2022-ongoing) or painting on stones (Farewell to the Stream (of…) ) , and so on.

Disaster appears as a recurring subject in your work. How do you navigate its representation without fixing it into a single perspective?

First, as mentioned earlier, I don’t like to replicate my past creative experiences. Developing new, appropriate modes of expression for each new work is, in itself, a fascinating endeavor.

More importantly, for me, “disaster” is not a generic term; it does not refer to distant suffering or the pain of others, but rather to a specific range—it implies distance, yet it is not far from me. Natural disasters, violence against others, and war—though they have not (yet) directly affected me—the multitude of subjects entangled in these disasters, the power structures and modes of communication through which we perceive and understand them, as well as related topics such as “memory” and “post-memory,” can all serve as more concrete leads for artistic research and expression.

Furthermore, I would like to add that disasters and the news reports surrounding them transform the “individuals”—victims we do not know—into “numbers” that we can comprehend even less. In this transformation, we always remain safely in the position of bystanders; over time, we either become numb or habitually light candles and offer prayers, moving ourselves, and then safely retreat back into our own lives. Surely, there is more we can do. My work aims to make the audience aware of this.

Where Can I Wish You Happy?, a project I have been working on since 2022, is one such example.

On 12 May 2008, at 14:28 Beijing time, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter scale struck my home province of Sichuan, China, claiming the lives of nearly 70,000 people. At the time, I was at university in another city far from home. Based on my personal states of absence, distance and being an outsider, my practices try to show the possibilities for me and for Chinese people in a similar situation to me to relate ourselves to the memory of this earthquake and to shape our own post-memory. 

In this project, I tried several different dimensions:

1）I use two group photographs of people involved in the earthquake, by which who were separated from each other in life and death, as bases for reconstructing the images on the photographs through relatively small textual writings. These group photos become platforms that straddle common experience and privateness, evoking memories and activating imagination.

2）By capturing and recreating scenes from a video of the day of the earthquake, shot by different cameramen, I want to highlight the ethical issues involved in journalism in extremely specific situations. 

3) I returned to several earthquake sites and photographed tourists in the act of photographing in these spaces. I also took photographs under the guidance of a local private guide. These photographic acts and results map out how different subjects, such as those who experienced the earthquake, mass media, and self-publishers, disseminated memories of the earthquake and constructed postmemories.

In summary, although I am an outsider, I do not wish to remain merely an outsider. I acknowledge my absence, yet I wish to engage with the history of the disaster; however, I refuse to contact the victims for fear of causing them secondary harm. Therefore, on the one hand, I am reluctant to confine the disaster to a single perspective, and on the other hand, I seek more diverse and reasonable approaches to engage with and discuss the disaster.

What role do you believe art plays in social and cultural change?

I’ve always believed that art doesn’t actually accomplish anything concrete. Often, I even feel that I chose to pursue art because I was too timid—it’s true that art rarely brings about social and cultural change in a direct and powerful way, but it does allow me (and others) to express ourselves in a relatively unique and safe manner. Fortunately, however, this relatively gentle form of artistic expression and appeal can be seen and heard by others. It offers those who receive it new perspectives and ways of thinking to recognize and reflect on the things we’ve overlooked or reduced to stereotypes—art unearths them from diaries, old filing cabinets and folders, and buried newspapers and digital messages, highlighting them so that, inevitably, someone will notice these glimmers of light.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Recently, I’m dealing with the topics of post-memory,war trauma and aftermath in the context of the history of Sichuan. This ongoing project is called It Got Messed up ‘Cause Zhang Xianzhong Wiped His… with Nettle. 

Around 1644, the defining event in Sichuan was Zhang Xianzhong’s massacre of the province. At that time, the combined effects of military campaigns—including those led by Zhang Xianzhong—banditry, famine, and tiger attacks caused Sichuan’s population to plummet to just 30% of its original size, leading to the subsequent “Huguang Fills Sichuan” immigration initiative. These historical events reshaped Sichuan’s demographic structure and have since anchored the identity of Sichuanese people in the transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties.

On the one hand, why do I (we) (Sichuanese people) not feel much emotional response to the massacres of that era? Although both instances involved massive population loss caused by violence, why is our reaction far less intense than when discussing the Japanese invasion of China or Auschwitz? Is it simply because too much time has passed?

On the other hand, if not for the tragedies of that war, would I not exist? This is also the starting point of this long-term artistic practice. After that distant war, my ancestors—who migrated from Guangdong to Sichuan under the Qing government’s resettlement policies—made my existence possible. Yet my identity as a “Sichuanese” is founded on the premise that the original inhabitants of Sichuan were nearly exterminated. This bizarre, detached predicament is perhaps shared by most Sichuanese today. So, does a “post-memory” of the Sichuan people regarding the legacy of Zhang Xianzhong exist? If so, in the absence of any visual records to generate such memory, can this “post-memory” be activated?

Drawing on official histories, unofficial accounts, and genealogical records documenting how Zhang Xianzhong’s forces “annihilated” the population of Sichuan at the time, as well as the criticism and praise of Zhang Xianzhong found in folk tales, this series of works attempts to address these questions through diverse artistic practices.

Over the next two to three years, I will continue my research, fieldwork, and artistic creation on this theme.

I will also continue my public practice regarding the Sichuan earthquake—establishing an archive of the Sichuan earthquake composed of citizen-generated footage. I started a long-term open call for photographs or videos of the 12 May 2008 Sichuan earthquake (which are not in circulation in the public domain) from people who experienced it, and from Sichuanese who were not present at the time of the earthquake, as well as group photos or photographs of the ruins taken by people who have since travelled to the ruins. There is also a call for personal stories about these images. I hope that over time these images and stories will form a repository of individual memories.

Text and photo courtesy of He Bo

Website: https://hebo.photography