Contemporary Chinese Ceramics- Huang Yulong

Have you ever seen a Buddha sporting a hoodie or a Maos in a track suit? Huang Yulong creates ceramic renditions of Buddha's and Maos that symbolize traditional Chinese culture with the trappings of Western hip-hop subcultures. Yulong was born in 1983 in Huainan, China and graduated from the Jingdezhen Ceramc Institute in 2007. He is now a Beijing based artist. As one of the new generation of Chinese artists and part of the post-‘80s and ‘only child’ generation, Huang is strongly influenced by the phenomenon of foreign culture in China, which he combines with his fascination with pottery and the material world. To him, hip-hop culture is “characterized by energy, power, purity, sexuality, freedom, courage. But this is also an urban story full of crying and blood.” Putting the Buddha in a hoodie is a paradoxical image that challenges the serenity of the traditional Chinese Buddha, urbanizing it to reflect China's rapid transition over the last few decades from a rural society to a mostly urban one.