HUO MAYJUNE: TIME NARRATOR

Huo Mayjune is a Chinese-born multidisciplinary artist studying at UAL, whose work probes the subtle, often subconscious systems that underpin existence - biological, emotional, and cosmological. Her practice traverses mediums including salt, cotton, acetate, and vinyl, as well as gestural brushwork on paper, uniting ephemeral materials with lasting conceptual resonance. With a poetic yet investigative lens, Huo evokes the imperceptible tensions between form and formlessness, presence and absence, memory and motion.

Always On, 2024

In Always On, Huo envisions the individual as a fragile gear in a vast societal mechanism, drawn into the inertia of collective systems. The work critiques the relentless pacing of modern life while questioning the cost of systemic dependency - both physical and psychological.

We Are Born to Know How to Return to the Ground, 2025

This existential fragility deepens in We Are Born to Know How to Return to the Ground (2025), a suspended installation of cotton and crystallised sea salts. A memorial to a bird whose death the artist witnessed, the piece employs salt - a material fundamental to survival and decay - as both sculptural medium and metaphor. The arc of crystallisation above and the dispersion below mirror the cycle of ascent and collapse, suggesting that all things, however airborne, must eventually return to the ground. Under lighting, the salt’s granular edges cast spectral shadows, turning the work into a quiet performance of transformation and mourning.

Chronicle of Being, 2024

In Chronicle of Being (2024), Huo shifts from the organic to the intangible. Using transparent acetate and vinyl cuttings on a 38 × 150 cm surface, the piece invites viewers to engage with systems that elude the naked eye: consciousness, light, atoms, stars. Imperceptible from afar, the work shimmers as one approaches - revealing a subtle choreography of light and line. The installation relies on spatial interaction, allowing meaning to emerge not from visibility, but from presence and proximity.

This sensitivity to the unseen finds a contrasting expression in Towards the Sun, a painting that channels subconscious narratives through intuitive motion and saturated, opulent hues. Brushstrokes of white, ochre, and rust flow across a black field, creating skeletal, morphing forms that oscillate between sea creatures and dreamlike anatomies. The visual language is instinctive and unrestrained - each mark a visceral transcription of memory and motion. Compared to the restraint of Chronicle of Being, Towards the Sun becomes a more passionate exploration of the inner self, revealing what lies beneath the conscious mind through an aesthetic of abundance, speed, and flux.

Huo’s works form a practice that is meditative yet exacting, scientific yet sacred. Whether working in salt or ink, translucence or texture, she builds spaces where time and self dissolve - leaving behind quiet systems of being that ask not to be solved, but felt.

Images: © Huo Mayjune, Courtesy of the Artist

Editor: Lavinia