HULU comes from the Chinese word hulu — “葫蘆,” meaning gourd.

In Chinese, the sound of hulu also echoes fulu — “福禄,” a phrase associated with blessing, prosperity, and good fortune. When Nanami Li named her studio HULU STUDIO, she was not only choosing a sound, but carrying forward a quiet wish rooted in Eastern culture.

In Nanami Li’s work, the gourd is not treated as a passive traditional symbol. It becomes a visual vessel — something to be looked at again, understood again, and reshaped through a contemporary language.

Before the gourd became a symbol of good fortune, it was first a vessel.

It held water, medicine, seeds, and sound. It was made into utensils, containers, and musical instruments. It lived close to the human body, to daily rituals, and to spiritual imagination.

Precisely because of this closeness to life, the gourd gradually became, in Eastern culture, a symbol of blessing, protection, continuity, and transformation.

Traditional gourd vessels, used as containers for seeds and daily materials.
The gourd existed first as a vessel before becoming an auspicious symbol.

Gourd Square Box, Qing dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei, CC BY 4.0 @ www.npm.gov.tw

Qing-dynasty cloisonné gourd vessels also show how the gourd form entered imperial decorative art as a symbol of blessing, abundance, and auspiciousness.Its meaning was never artificially imposed.
It grew from its natural form, its practical use, its sound in language, and the long memory of culture.

Nanami Li chooses the gourd as a long-term subject because of this quiet depth.  It appears simple, almost humble, yet it carries an extraordinary capacity for meaning.  It is both plant and vessel; both nature and object; both a living form and a carrier of human wishes, beliefs, and order.

For Nanami Li, the gourd is not a nostalgic folk object.  It is an Eastern form that has not yet been fully opened.  Through painting, objects, and one-of-one art toys, she brings it out of its traditional context and translates it into a contemporary visual language.

The double-rounded silhouette also forms the foundation of HULU STUDIO’s symbol — a shape that moves between gourd, vessel, the number eight, and contemporary mark. In Eastern culture, eight is often associated with abundance, continuity, and good fortune, echoing the symbolic meaning of the gourd itself.

HULU STUDIO sees the gourd through blue.

Blue is connected to water — to softness, movement, receptivity, and the Eastern philosophical idea of living in accordance with nature. Water does not exist through force, yet it passes through all things and nourishes all things. It is quiet, continuous, and inseparable from the cycles of the natural world.

For this reason, the blue gourds in Nanami Li’s work are not reproductions of tradition, nor are they images of nostalgia. They are reimagined contemporary vessels, carrying nature, time, memory, and a quiet blessing.

The ideal of HULU STUDIO is to allow overlooked traditional symbols to breathe again in the present. Cultural forms that once belonged to daily life, folk belief, and direct experience with nature do not need to remain in the past.

Through a new visual language, they can enter today’s spaces of art, collecting, and living.

Human beings come from nature, and eventually return to nature.

Through HULU STUDIO, Nanami Li hopes to awaken an old curiosity toward the natural world: to notice the shape of a fruit, to feel the traces left by time, and to rediscover the quiet beauty of forms that have always been beside us, yet are so often forgotten.

This is not nostalgia.
It is Nanami Li’s contemporary way of allowing an ancient Eastern symbol to breathe again.

Image credit: Gourd Square Box, Qing dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei, CC BY 4.0 @ www.npm.gov.tw
Historical reference: Cloisonné enamel gourd-shaped wall vase with imperial poem and auspicious motifs, Qing dynasty, Palace Museum, Beijing.