SHI Qi

Based in Hangzhou from 1997, Shi Qi practices different forms of painting. This open dimension is encouraged within the experimental painting department of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts where she studies. She travels to Western China, notably Guizhou and Shaanxi. She created a pictorial installation entitled “Hongzhuang” (Red Blush) when she graduated, a reflection on women’s marriage in China in contemporary times.

After a stay in Shanghai and Beijing, Shi Qi continued her studies in France at the Paris-Cergy School of Fine Arts in 2002. She extended her training to new media, particularly video. She travels in Europe and the United States, while staying mainly in China. Her work, in phase with these movements, records her reactions to these different environments. While understanding subjects linked to Chinese material culture with media such as video, she extends her practice of ink and adapts it to contemporary subjects.

For nearly 10 years, she explored ink and oil, different themes linked to the experience of motherhood, from gestation to childhood. 2007 was marked by the wave of births in China, accompanying the lunar year of the pig. The different variations of Asian and European consumer society nourish the view of childhood that she expresses through her work from this period.

In 2017, her work experienced a turning point. She develops a gestural painting partly conceived as the reminiscence of written signs. This work on line takes her beyond the strictly pictorial framework to work in ink and paper in three dimensions. From 2020, she has created works based on calligraphic or pictorial fragments whose form is similar to a book with unknowable content, beyond the meaning of the words and figures.

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