Nut Chi’s Heidelberg Mural

Chinese artist Nut Chi is known for transforming traditional blue-and-white porcelain—qinghua—into large-scale street art. His signature style revives motifs from ancient Chinese ceramic art, breathing them into modern murals with remarkable precision and symbolic depth.

At Metropolink 2025 in Heidelberg, Nut Chi created a powerful new mural, using Montana GOLD and Montana BLACK. The work emerges from a very personal place: during his stay in Heidelberg, he experienced severe depression, amnesia, and cognitive impairment—so much so that for several days he forgot who he was, where he was, even his family. With the help of local curator Pascal Baumgärtner, and staying with Pascal’s family, Nut gradually recovered enough to finish the piece. His stay with the family taught him a profound lesson about the immense value of emotional support.

As Nut Chi recalls: “My time in their home taught me a profound lesson: the immense value of emotional support.”

Over the past six months Nut had studied over two hundred lectures, and here he attempted to sum up his understanding of “Tao” (The Way). His mural is his interpretation of how love comes into being under the guiding principles of Tao: that strength should lead to humility and service; that those endowed with ability or power have a responsibility to help others. If one fails in that duty, one might lose both love and the gifts given by heaven. Nut Chi says he’s never heard this concept explained around him before, but he hopes more people will understand it moving forward.

The Heidelberg mural thus stands not just as an artwork, but as a testament to the healing power of emotional support—and as a bridge between ancient philosophy and the very real, vulnerable human being behind the paint. As an additional intervention, Nut also transformed the Pershing tank located on the festival grounds. This relic of past conflicts remains a stark reminder of the ongoing presence of war—and underscores the urgent realization of how senseless these wars truly are.