Hai Bo was born in 1962 in Changchun, China. He graduated from the Printmaking Department of the Fine Art Institute of Jilin (China) in 1984. He currently lives and works in Beijing. His artistic approach involves the connection with the past through photography. In his warm and rustic photography, familiar people and scenes captured in the soft light seem timeless. Hai Bo asserts that "life is more powerful than art." While his practice has consistently remained connected to the life he knows well and his photographic techniques are characterized by simplicity, his works possess a deeply moving power with candid expression of life. In his recent works, Hai Bo adopts a diary-like approach, using seemingly scattered fragments to document memories that appear to be gradually fading. Occasionally surfacing in dreams or the subconscious, the fragments digress from the linear narrative as "streams of consciousness," reclaiming memories and drawing attention to the idea of the self.
Hai Bo was a participating artist in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001). His solo exhibitions were held at Pingshan Art Museum (Shenzhen), Pace Gallery (Beijing), Pace/MacGill Gallery (New York), Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington DC), Beijing Commune (Beijing), etc. His works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Center of Photography (New York), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington), the Getty Center (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane), M+ Art Museum (Hong Kong), OCAT Art Center (Shenzhen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai), etc. His works have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Queensland Art Gallery, National Art Museum of China, M+ Art Museum Hong Kong, Guangdong Museum of Art, Pingshan Art Museum and other museums and institutions. Hai Bo was awarded the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2000, the Mitchetti Prize in 2004, and the Martell Artist of the Year in 2011.
