Catherine Hu: Figure (1) Drawings

Void of any texts other than the title and author’s name, the reader has to take this as literally as possible: that this book contains figure 1 drawings. Since it is not normal to have more than one figure 1 in one title, the only possibility is that these are figure 1s from different books (big hint being the drawing on the cover). A closer look reveals that every image is painstakingly (or maybe pleasurably?) redrawn by hand, even down to the texts and fonts used. The result is a work that effortlessly creates and captions itself through a simple idea-as-approach. This book contains over a hundred figure 1 drawings of diagrams labeled ‘figure 1’ collected between 2018 and 2022. These drawings are an important part of the artist’s practice — made during in-between periods when she wasn’t sure what to do.