Qiu Anxiong (B. 1972)
Qiu Anxiong
QIU ANXIONG b. 1972, Feeling the Mountains and Knowing the Waters—Like the Moon of the Lute, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm (59 x 39 3/8 in.)
Qiu Anxiong, born in 1972 in Sichuan Province, graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1994 and from the Kassel School of Art in Germany in 2003. He is currently a professor at the College of Design of East China Normal University, a member of the Experimental Art Committee of the China Artists Association, and a judge for the National Art Exhibition.
Qiu Anxiong is a key figure in Chinese contemporary art known for merging traditional ink painting with experimental animation and video. His work is significant because it rethinks how China’s past, present, and future are visually imagined within global contemporary art discourse. Qiu often uses hand-painted, black‑and‑white imagery animated frame by frame, visually echoing classical ink‑and‑brush literati painting while presenting scenes of industrialisation, ecological crisis, and social transformation. His works frequently stage tensions between myth and technology, nature and urbanisation, and individual memory and collective history, turning Chinese modernisation into a poetic but unsettling visual narrative.
QIU ANXIONG b. 1972, Peach Blossom Spring Wonderland—Encounter with a Snake, 2025, Ink and colour on silk, 135.5 x 180.6 x 5 cm (53 3/8 x 71 1/8 x 2 in.)
Qiu is often cited as one of the most accomplished animation‑based artists of his generation in China, helping to legitimise animation and moving image as central, not peripheral, forms within Chinese contemporary art and inspiring younger artists. His education at major art academies and his presence in international exhibitions have also helped connect Chinese experimental moving‑image practices to global conversations on modernity, environmental crisis, and post-socialist change.
Conceptually, Qiu’s practice offers a distinctive vision of “modernity in flux”, emphasising instability, mutation, and moral ambiguity rather than a simple story of progress. This makes his work an important reference point for scholars and curators analysing how Chinese artists respond to rapid urbanisation, political shifts, and globalisation without reducing these issues to propaganda or straightforward critique.
QIU ANXIONG b. 1972, The Golden Bough - The Tiger in Me, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 cm (59 x 39 3/8 in.)
As a leading figure in contemporary ink animation, his works are part of the collections of prestigious international and domestic institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Arken Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo), Kunsthalle Zürich, and M+ Museum of Contemporary Art (Hong Kong).
He has held solo exhibitions at renowned institutions such as the Fosun Foundation (Shanghai), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Arken Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas), and Crow Museum of Asian Art (Dallas). His work has also been featured in major international and domestic exhibitions, including Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Sao Paulo Biennial, the Sydney Biennale, the Cairo Biennale, the Thessaloniki Biennale, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and the Busan Biennale. In 2026, his solo exhibition, titled Bearing the Unseen, is organised by Pearl Lam Projects in coincidence with Art Month of Hong Kong.
