City – Astrolabe

A native of Hangzhou, Chu Chu studied at the China Academy of Art and has received training in traditional Chinese painting, graphic design, oil painting, photography and film. For her doctoral degree she studied calligraphy under Wang Dongling. Chu explores the relationship between traditional and new media and integrates them in her artwork. In this work, Chu Chu combines photography, calligraphy, and gold and silver colour to produce stunning cityscapes. The artist photographed panoramas of cities in 2011, then in 2017 she re-worked her photographs by writing cursive calligraphy in diluted ink and silver colour in the sky above the city. Inscribing extracts from Invisible Cities by the Italian writer Italo Calvino, Chu enriches her work with Chinese calligraphy, literature, and the imagination of both her and the writer in constructing the ideal city.