Resilient Friendship Mural

Title of Artwork: Resilient Friendship

Artist: Guiyong Zhu

Form: Mural

Commissioned by: City of Salisbury - Create a Place - Public Art Project

Year of Completion: 2022

Rationale:

The City of Salisbury celebrates 20 years of friendship with Mobara City, Japan.

Mobara Park is a renown koi park in the heart of Mobara City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan which features a beautiful lotus pond and cherry blossoms.

Koi fish are popular symbols in Japanese culture and part of Japan’s national identity. They symbolize prosperity, good fortune, strength, and perseverance. The lotus flower represents purity and the journey of life. The flower starts as a delicate bud down in the bottom muddy part of the water. It slowly pushes to the surface reaching for the sun and then once it hits the top, blossoms into a beautiful flower. This has been symbolic of the journey that every person must go through as they strive to gain enlightenment.

This mural’s combination of the lotus and the koi represent continual growth, strength, and mutual aspirations. The koi swimming in the lotus pond bring dynamic movement endowing the building and its surrounds with life in a vivid, colourful, energising, but melodic way. It references the shared values of peaceful harmony between the sister cities promoting a mutual understanding, a sharing of values and aspirations, which represent a strong and lasting friendship.