Born in Tainan in 1978, Hsu Hui-Ching graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts with an MFA. Her artistic exploration is often based on herself, while artmaking becomes a form of self-exploration featuring physical or chemical transformation as her life experiences interact with the material or the nonmaterial.
Compared to the diverse media and forms of her works, the subject mainly focuses on her life. Therefore, the materials are often developed from the surroundings or the daily objects. Like cooking, her strong curiosity about “materials” encourages her to perceive, learn, experience, and feel the quality of the materials, through which she develops particular “techniques” and “form” based on the different materials.
Since 2000, with an increasing interest in consumerist desire, she has created a series of works about losing weight, including the most well-known work “Step Off, It's My Time” a performance art documentation featuring a 7-day weight-loss plan. The delicious food in the images turns out to be the forced vomit from a risk-taking attempt to lose weight. Following the same concept, her recent working experience in aviation service, which was a twist of her life, inspired her to develop a series of works about traveling – body constantly moving from one place to another – in 2003. Hotel Project’s No.1 to No.5 are the most complete works in the series. 2005, a new opportunity came to Hsu and she became an elementary school teacher who spent most of her time talking. The role as an educator allows her to explore the conflict, question, and introspection of this profession, which provides new elements to her artistic practice. In recent years, she has worked with her students in several art projects.