Qiu Zhijie

b. 1969, Fujian

Artist

Beijing artist Qiu Zhijie majored in printmaking at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou (BFA, 1992). An internationally acclaimed artist, curator and art critic, Qiu is best known for his calligraphy, photography and video-installations. Like Xu Bing, Gu Wenda and Song Dong, Qiu’s early works explore the centrality of the text in relation to social orthodoxy. In the long-term performance Assignment No. 1: Copying ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ a Thousand Times (1986–97), Qiu repeatedly copied Wang Xizhi’s classic text on a single piece of paper, resulting in a mass of illegible ink.

In his environmental installation project, A Quiz of Memories Before the Spring Festival 1994, Qiu obfuscated names on grave markers during the ‘tomb-sweeping’ festival, resulting in chaos for the living and dead (see Qingming Festival). Qiu’s recent work examines cultural practices that circumscribe the dissemination of art, displacing the conceptual art dominating mid 1990s experimental art. In 2002 he co-curated The Long March—A Walking Visual Display, ‘marching’ contemporary art by Chinese and international artists into local communities along the historic route to examine notions of cultural and historical reciprocity.

Further reading

Gao, Minglu (ed.) (1991). Inside Out: New Chinese Art. New York: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Asia Society Galleries, New York [for Assignment No. 1].

Wu, Hung (2000). Exhibiting Experimental Art in China. Chicago: Smart Museum of Art/University of Chicago Press. [Co-curated the exhibitions ‘Post-Sense Sensibility: Distorted Bodies and Delusion’ (1999) and ‘Home? Contemporary Art Proposals’ (2000).]

——(2000). Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century. Chicago: Smart Museum of Art/University of Chicago Press.

ROBIN VISSER