This August, we are pleased to present the first solo exhibition in France by the Europe-based independent illustrator Xuyu. The exhibition brings together an extensive selection of original works—shown publicly for the first time—including drawings on paper, illustrations on wood panels, and intimate sketchbook pages from the artist’s daily practice. Alongside these works, we also showcase her two recent publications, Saluta dall’Italia and Drawing while Travelling, offering audiences in Paris a deeper and more nuanced view into the world she has built through her journeys and artistic discipline.
Raised in a small village in southern China, Xuyu made the resolute decision to leave home and pursue her artistic aspirations in Italy, studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Throughout her studies, she supported herself through teaching and illustration commissions, while devoting every free moment to traveling across Europe with her sketchbook in hand.
“I often travel alone,” she recalls. Guided by her love of on-the-spot sketching, she captures the cities she has passed through, the strangers she has met, and the fleeting stories that unfold in transit. Her practice is shaped as much by solitary movement as by encounters: late-night conversations with friends on a Tuscan hillside, open-air baths on the southern Venetian coast, joining fishermen at sea before dawn, forming unexpected friendships, meeting generous landlords and roommates, discovering healing food. Within her work lies the texture of ordinary life, the persistence of personal ideals, and a quiet yet fearless sense of freedom.
Xuyu’s early hand-painted works employ saturated watercolor, gouache, and textured acrylics; more recently, she has expanded into digital painting. Her images are characterized by vivid palettes, childlike clarity of line, and narrative warmth. In the works drawn from Saluta dall’Italia, viewers encounter the historic presence of Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore, golden porticos illuminated under deep blue night skies, seafood stalls along Sicily’s bright coastline, and even humble flower or fruit stands—each scene imbued with an unmistakable joy in everyday life.
This year marks the publication of Drawing while Travelling, a body of work that gathers moments collected across years of movement. Through this exhibition, we hope to present a more complete and intimate map of the small world she has built—one shaped by courage, curiosity, and the quiet discipline of drawing.
“Drawing while Travelling is dedicated to the self I was before turning thirty—thank you for moving forward with courage. And it is also dedicated to you who are striving, uncertain, determined, and endlessly in love with life. May the colors within these pages bring you a small measure of warmth and strength.”