Artist Yu Hong's ongoing exhibition at the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts includes the show's centerpiece, A Garden of Dreams, paintings that portray girls who strike gymnastic poses against backgrounds of sheer cliffs. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Since the 1990s Yu has been focusing on the mental wellbeing of young artists.

"I've discovered a lot of heartbreak among this group. Being sensitive, fragile, helpless and honest, they want respect and love but they are often misunderstood. These feelings become the subjects of my creations," she says.

In the painting Shouzhu Daitu (Waiting for gain without pain), a young woman squats on the top of a cluster of traffic lights that are facing in different directions, showing how people get lost in the pursuit of gain.

But Yu softens the scene with a poetic touch: She adds several willow twigs that stroke the woman's body.

In her other paintings, she portrays girls who strike gymnastic poses against backgrounds like sheer cliffs. Through this, she tries to show the tension and feelings of crisis that these characters face.