Presented here as the third interview in Chapter Two, “The Artist’s Muse: What Inspires You,” this conversation introduces the practice of Syan Hu.
For Syan Hu, inspiration emerges from a quiet but persistent observation: that life does not end with decay, but continues within it. In Shin 芯 (The Living Core), an extension of his earlier series Kara 殻, Hu allows photography to move beyond representation and become a living site—an image shaped by mycelium, mold, time, and chance. What begins as cultivation gradually shifts into collaboration, as control gives way to attention.
Throughout this interview, Hu reflects on a pivotal transformation in his practice: from preserving form to allowing change, from making to caretaking. Fear and tenderness coexist in his process, as beauty reveals itself where collapse and regeneration meet. This sensibility finds its most intimate expression in SHIN芯_04, a work that reconsiders healing not as restoration, but as a sustained coexistence with what has already changed.
Edited with restraint, this conversation invites us to slow down and listen—to subtle transformations, to the breath within materials, and to a muse that resides not in certainty, but in patient care. We invite you to enter Hu’s practice, where creation and erosion unfold as one continuous gesture.
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Q. Thank you for joining us today—it's wonderful to meet you. To start, what is the main source of inspiration for your current work? When did this particular muse first become meaningful to you, and can you describe that initial encounter?
A. The source of my current work comes from observing how life persists through decay.
Continue working with my previous series which is 「Kara 殻」, I get to further experimenting with mold. In 「Shin 芯」 (The Living Core), I let the image itself become a living medium, reprinting photographs of mycelium and allowing mold to grow upon them. What began as a controlled act of cultivation soon turned into collaboration. The surface breathed, transformed, and rewrote itself beyond my intention.
My fascination with this process began years ago, when I realized that decay is not an end, but a continuation, is a quiet regeneration that takes place beneath the visible. I was drawn to the moment when beauty and collapse coexist, when what seems ruined begins to pulse again. This slow respiration within matter, fragile yet persistent, has become my muse ever since.
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| 「SHIN芯」_07 |
Q. When you first discovered this source of inspiration, what emotions did you experience? How did it change your artistic direction or working methods afterward?
A. At first, I felt an unfamiliar mixture of fear and tenderness.
Watching mold spread across the printed surface was unsettling, something I once considered a sign of failure. But as I observed its slow movements, I began to sense a fragile kind of beauty within its persistence. The boundary between decay and growth started to dissolve.
This realization shifted my entire practice. I stopped trying to preserve or perfect my materials; instead, I allowed them to change, to breathe, to decide their own form. My role became less of a maker and more of a caretake, a witness to the quiet negotiations between matter and time. Since then, my work has moved away from representation toward coexistence, where the image is not fixed but continuously reborn.
Q. How does your muse typically appear to you—as visual images, sounds, spatial feelings, or particular emotions? Could you describe its specific characteristics or qualities in detail?
A. My muse rarely appears as an image; it comes more as an atmosphere, a certain density in the air, a sense of moisture, stillness, and slow transformation. It feels like standing inside a breath that never fully exhales.
Visually, it takes the form of textures rather than shapes: the soft bloom of mold, the fading gloss of paper, the trace of light dissolving into shadow. There’s always a tension between clarity and blur, between what wants to appear and what resists visibility.
Emotionally, it carries both intimacy and distance. It reminds me that every act of creation is also an act of disappearance that beauty lives in impermanence. When this feeling arrives, I don’t capture it; I let it linger, and allow my materials to respond in their own time.
Q. Could you walk us through one specific work that you feel most powerfully embodies your muse? What was the journey from initial inspiration to finished piece, and what challenges or discoveries emerged along the way?
A. One work that embodies my muse most intimately is 「SHIN芯」_04, a photograph of my own arm marked by an old scar that has followed me since childhood. After printing the image, I planted living mycelium directly onto the surface, hoping to create a material form of healing that could also speak to emotional repair.
Unexpectedly, this was the only piece that did not grow mold. The mycelium spread gently across the print, weaving a soft membrane over the wound, as if it understood what to protect. Watching it wrap the scar so carefully felt like witnessing a dialogue between body and matter, between my own fragility and the quiet intelligence of the organism.
Through this work, I realized that healing doesn’t always mean restoration. Sometimes it means coexistence the acceptance of what has already changed. The photograph no longer felt like an image of injury, but a living tissue of empathy.
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| 「SHIN芯」_04 |
Q. Has your relationship with your muse evolved over time? Are there aspects that have deepened or new dimensions you've discovered that you'd like to share?
A. Over time, my relationship with this muse has become quieter, but also more intimate. In the beginning, I approached it with curiosity and control, trying to document, to guide, even to perfect the process of decay.
Now I understand that its power lies not in transformation alone, but in the patience of coexisting with change. What has deepened for me is trust. I’ve learned to let materials live their own rhythm, to accept uncertainty as part of the work’s breath. Rather than seeking beauty in the visible, I’ve started to listen to the subtle movements within silence—the humidity, the waiting, the slow conversation between matter and time. This muse continues to remind me that creation is never separate from erosion. They are two gestures of the same life, pulsing softly beneath everything that appears still.
Q. Do you have any intentional activities or routines for connecting with inspiration? Conversely, when inspiration doesn't come easily, how do you handle those periods?
A. I don’t chase inspiration anymore. Instead, I try to create the conditions for it to breathe. Most of my ideas come during quiet routines, cleaning the studio, tending to the terrarium, or simply watching moisture gather on a surface.
These small, repetitive gestures remind me that creativity often grows in the background, much like mycelium expanding in the dark. When inspiration slows down, I no longer see it as absence. I treat those periods as a kind of incubation, a necessary stillness before something begins to shift again. Rather than forcing progress, I focus on listening to materials, to air, to the faint pulse beneath waiting. In those moments, I realize that even silence is a form of creation.
Q. Can you tell us about a moment when your muse led you somewhere unexpected or challenging? What did you discover about yourself or your practice through that experience?
A. One of the most unexpected moments occurred while working on 「SHIN芯」_05. It began as a simple experiment, I wanted to photograph mold in a way that felt calm and almost beautiful, to soften its usual sense of repulsion. But the process quickly escaped my control. The print I used, which already depicted a cluster of mold, was infected again during cultivation.
The new growth spread aggressively across the surface, forming dense, irregular black patches that disrupted the composition. It felt chaotic, almost hostile—nothing like what I had intended. Yet when I stepped back, I realized that this dissonance was essential. Without it, the series would feel incomplete, too polished to be true. That work reminded me that control and harmony are illusions; life thrives through imbalance. Sometimes beauty doesn’t need to be resolved, it only needs to be witnessed.
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| 「SHIN芯」_05 |
Q. How does your audience's response to your work affect your relationship with your muse? Have viewers ever helped you see new aspects of your inspiration that you hadn't noticed before?
A. Audience reactions often remind me how fragile the boundary is between attraction and discomfort. Many people feel conflicted when they encounter my work, they’re drawn to the softness and color, yet unsettled when they realize what they’re looking at. That moment of hesitation is very meaningful to me, because it mirrors my own journey from resistance to empathy. Some viewers have described the mold as “alive but peaceful,” or said that the images made them feel strangely safe. Their words made me realize that decay, when seen with care, can evoke tenderness rather than fear.
Through them, I learned that the work is not only about my dialogue with matter, but also about how others learn to breathe with it. In that exchange, my muse becomes shared, it moves from a private meditation to a collective recognition of life’s quiet persistence.
Q. How do you balance staying true to your core inspiration while also allowing room for growth and change? Have there been times when you've had to choose between following your muse and meeting external expectations?
A. For me, staying true to my core inspiration doesn’t mean holding it still, it means allowing it to breathe. My muse has always been alive, unpredictable, and slightly beyond control, so the balance lies in listening rather than deciding.
Growth happens naturally when I stop trying to preserve the original idea and let it evolve through contact with time, material, and accident. There have been moments when external expectations, whether aesthetic, institutional, or professional, suggested that I should make my work more “appealing” or “complete.” But the more I tried to comply, the more the work lost its pulse. I’ve learned that authenticity doesn’t come from refinement, but from patience: the willingness to let something remain unresolved. In that sense, following my muse often means trusting imperfection, recognizing that change itself is not a distraction from the core, but its continuation.
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| 「SHIN芯」_06 |
Q. Thank you so much for sharing such thoughtful insights with us today. As we conclude our conversation, Looking ahead, in what direction do you think your muse will develop or expand? Are there new territories of inspiration you're eager to explore, and what draws you to them?
A. Shin (The Living Core) still feels unfinished to me, more like a field experiment than a conclusion. It opened a door for me to think about life not only as matter, but as a system that seeks equilibrium.
Recently, I’ve been studying the biological behaviors of plants and small organisms, creating miniature ecosystems where living species coexist in balance. Through these experiments, I hope to observe beauty as something that emerges naturally from interdependence, rather than from design. I’ve also been drawn to the Japanese school of Ikebana, Ohara-ryu, whose philosophy begins with “understanding nature before expressing it.” This resonates deeply with my own process: to know, to coexist, and then to translate that experience into form. My next body of work will likely grow from this, where photography, ecology, and quiet observation intertwine, continuing the same breath that began with Kara and Shin.
Contact
Artist : Syan Hu
Instagram : @aristurtle527
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