Ying Miao

Miao Ying's initial work focused on censorship on the Chinese internet through projects like The Blind Spot (2007), where the artist created a dictionary out of the words censored from google.cn.[1] She continues to create work primarily online, often using GIFs, mixing screenshots and lo-fi visual elements, Second Life, and drawing from the visual style of major Chinese websites like Taobao and Baidu. Her work allows users outside China to get a glimpse of life within the Great Firewall and explores in a humorous way, the visual language born from the internet and its effect on users as they interact with it. She also works with Bilibili, a video-sharing website where user's comments appear over the video in real time, as in her web-based work iPhone Garbage (2014)[2]. This technique of information overload is also a source of inspiration for Miao’s practice; she uses the term naodong, internet slang literally meaning “brain hole,” derived from naobu, or “brain supplement.” On July 8-August 7, 2015, she exhibited a series of GIFs of websites blocked in China titled "HOLDING A KITCHEN KNIFE TO CUT THE INTERNET CABLE" at the Chinese Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Miao Ying graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from the China Academy of Art's New Media Art department in Hangzhou, China, and earned a Master in Fine Arts degree in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred State College's New York State College of Ceramics (NYSCC) in 2009.