Ma Hui is a well-established as an artist in northern Europe, but her roots go deep as a child of the Cultural Revolution - a period of turmoil in China that forever changed her life and the lives of countless others. The 53-year-old left her homeland 25 years ago and moved to Europe. But she has returned to China to face her past and to seek recognition from Chinese art lovers for her unique form of abstract art that incorporates materials such as ropes, chains and keys.
When and why did you start to draw and paint?
When I was very young, I wanted to become an architect. But I could not get the proper mathematics education in those days of political unrest during the Cultural Revolution. I was living in [the northwestern autonomous region of] Ningxia at the time. I was told that I could draw very well. All of my childhood memories in Ningxia were so beautiful and poetic: the wind battling with the trees, grey grazing grounds on the banks of the Yellow River, the yellow earth, a single red dot in the sky, rapids in the stream, this never-ending road. That's why I eventually decided to enrol in the only academy with a fine arts department in northwest China. That was the Xian Academy of Fine Arts. It had a good reputation and a strong Chinese identity.
As a child, you spent eight years in the countryside, forced into labour. Why was this?
My father was an intellectual and also a high-ranking Communist Party official in the 1950s. I was born in Beijing. When I was just one year old, my family, including myself, my two sisters and my three brothers, moved to Ningxia. We lived in a big house with a walled garden and lots of servants. I must have been eight years old when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) started to put an end to 'capitalist roaders' [seeking to restore the political and economic rule of capitalism]. The so-called Red Guards initiated a witch-hunt against intellectuals. Almost all young people in urban areas were forced to go to the countryside to be 're-educated through labour'.
Who were your parents? Why did their background affect you so much?
I had to spend most of my formative years in the countryside, simply because I was the daughter of a 'capitalist' who disagreed with the Communist Party. My father was forced to step down from the post of party chairman in Ningxia and was jailed for years. My mother, a doctor, was also detained. Our family was split up. More than eight years of hard physical labour followed, working in the fields, planting rice at three o'clock in the morning, standing knee-deep in icy waters. I also had to carry heavy loads on my back. I was alone, without the possibility of visiting my parents. I was very lonely in the countryside. Other children were not allowed to play with me. I started drawing and writing poetry as a way to console myself. I became familiar with all sorts of materials - needles and thread, rope and string - while working in a textile factory. I still tap into these memories for inspiration for my artwork. My first catalogue, produced in Europe, was called The Landscapes from my Childhood. In the late 1970s, the end of the Cultural Revolution meant the end of suffering, along with the possibility of beginning a normal life and registering at the academy.