Qiu Zhijie

In 2005, his work was exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Between Past And Future: New Photography And Video From China, including Tattoo 1, which explores Qiu's assertion that in our media-saturated age, "signs and codes have overpowered actual human beings, and our bodies have become merely their vehicles." The character bu — meaning "no" — is written across the artist's body and on the wall behind him, creating the illusion that it floats free of the body.

Qiu has been teaching in the Total Art Studio of China Academy of Art since 2003. He has proposed ways to develop the concept of “total art” in both formal academic and professional contexts.

According to Qiu in an interview from 2001, the most significant turning point in his career was his work producing the installation Public Life/Glass Toilet (1994), which led to an ongoing interest in revealing the otherwise obscured practices of art production.

Qiu is currently a professor at the School of Inter-media Art of China Art Academy, the Director of Total Art Studio and member of the supervisor team in the Art and Social Thoughts Institute. He also curated "Phenomena and Image" in 1996, a series of exhibitions with the theme of “Post-sense Sensibility” between 1999 and 2004, “Long March, A Walking Visual Display” in 2002, and the video portion of the First Guangzhou Triennial and “Archeology of Future: The Second Triennial of Chinese Art” in 2005.

The artist's break-through exhibition was in 1992 with China's New Art, Post-1989 at the Hanart Gallery and Hong Kong Arts Centre. By 1999, his work began receiving overseas interest with his inclusion in Revolutionary Capitals: Beijing-London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 2007 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the New York gallery Chambers Fine Art.

Qiu was born in 1969 in Fujian province. In 1992, he graduated from the printmaking department at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou. He now lives and works in Beijing.

Qiu was born in 1969 in Fujian province, China. He graduated from the printmaking department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou in 1992. Soon after, he was developing his technical and conceptual skills, as seen in his graduate work A New Life (1992). The installation featured 16 glass panels of different sizes on which texts, slogans, and figures were printed. The installation create a translucent labyrinth from these panels, which allowed the audience to take part in the work as their bodies filled the clear sections of the glass panels. Qiu's work in A New Life developed the basis for later works including Bathroom (1997) and his Tattoo series (1994). The Tattoo series in particular further explored the concept of free-floating symbols and words that were imposed on the individual. The imposition of the external world onto the individual for better or worse is also featured in his Rainbow photography series.