He Bo, China
Farewell to the Stream (of…)
(Summer 2022)

Project in collaboration with Pro Helvetia Shangai

The landscape of the Verzasca Valley in Switzerland seems to me to be very similar to the mountainous landscape of The Western Sichuan Plateau, near my hometown in China.
This similarity triggered a very strange feeling of homesickness and longing for old friends, which were linked to the visual experience of being reproduced and to the physical situation of being actually in a distant land.

I asked my friends to send me some photographs of landscapes they had taken when we had previously travelled together in western Sichuan. Using the brushes I bought when I studied Chinese painting as a child and dipping them into the water in the streams here, I tried to draw the scenes from these photographs on the rocks in the bodies of water. After painting a part, the water on the rock would dry out quickly, so I photographed each part of the painting and finally put them together.

Addio al ruscello (di...)
Il paesaggio della Valle Verzasca in Svizzera mi sembra molto simile al paesaggio montuoso dell’Altopiano del Sichuan occidentale, vicino alla mia città natale in Cina. Questa somiglianza ha innescato una strana sensazione di nostalgia e di malinconia verso vecchi amici, legata all’esperienza visiva della riproduzione e alla situazione fisica di trovarsi effettivamente in una terra lontana. Ho chiesto ai miei amici di inviarmi alcune fotografie di paesaggi che avevano scattato quando avevamo viaggiato insieme nel Sichuan occidentale. Utilizzando i pennelli che avevo comprato quando studiavo pittura cinese da bambino e immergendoli nell’acqua dei ruscelli qui, ho cercato di disegnare le scene di queste fotografie sulle rocce negli specchi d’acqua. Dopo aver dipinto una parte, l’acqua sulla roccia si asciugava rapidamente, quindi ho fotografato ogni parte del dipinto e alla fine li ho messi insieme.

He Bo, China
They Say These Goats Are Rare,
but They Say They Are Actually Not That Rare.
(Summer 2022)

This is a collection of short allegories featuring
Nera Verzasca, a rare goat, and perhaps
about ourselves.

Questa è una raccolta di brevi allegorie che
hanno come protagonista la Nera Verzasca,
una rara capra, e forse anche noi stessi.

He Bo

Born in 1989 in Sichuan Province, China, He Bo is a practitioner of photographic image- based art, writer, educator and curator. Now studying in Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, the Netherlands. He Bo’s 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. He Bo was shortlisted in Foam Talent Call (2018, the Netherlands) and the 9th Three Shadows Photography Awards (2017, China). He won LensCulture Exposure Awards, Jurors’ picks (2020, the Netherlands), Excellent Photographer Award, Pingyao International Photography Festival (2018, 2016, China), Excellent Exhibition Award, Xishuangbanna Foto Festival (2018, China).