A brush with tradition

Since Ningxia is home to people of the Hui ethnic group, Tian also paints aspects of Hui culture, such as dancing and traditional clothes.

Tian has also been commissioned to paint on the walls of restaurants, art centers and galleries. In 2016, she was sent by the Ningxia Intangible Cultural Heritage Center to study folk painting in Fuzhou, Fujian province, where she learned to combine lacquer art with her work.

In 2017, she was listed as an inheritor of the folk painting intangible cultural heritage of Ningxia.

"I am drawn to kangweihua because it offers me lots of space to imagine and create. Most importantly, the process of painting creates a special bond between me and my childhood, between me and my hometown, between me and my mother," Tian says.

She also laments that, with urbanization, many houses in her village were renovated and kangweihua is no longer used by many people as home decoration.