About

Artist Biography

Qin Ni is a Chinese artist who’s currently pursuing her career in France, Paris. Her creativity is displayed through various art forms such as painting, visual installations, and video production.

In French, the word ‘history’ can carry two different meanings whenever the first letter of the word is a capital letter or not. Qin Ni is constantly trying to combine her owns thoughts, emotions, and memories (h) in her art to eventually assign a spot to each piece in her virtual museum (H). Her entire body of artwork is registered, classified, archived, and made public through public exhibitions during which new collective memories are created. 

Qin Ni studied painting in the Beaux-Arts Academy of Tsingua University in China where she graduated a bachelor’s degree. Subsequently, she decided to pursue further education in France where she earned a diploma of higher education in plastic arts at the Beaux-Arts of Nantes as well as a Master’s degree in Multimedia at University of Angers. 

Artist statement

There are more than a few themes in my works which are undeniably linked to the perception of memory and time. My devotion to this subject probably finds its roots in the fact that at a very early age I left my hometown to go to Beijing, then France, where I never really settled down. 

Since childhood, I’ve always given much care and attention to my possessions, especially ancient belongings, the older they are, the harder it is for me to get rid of them. I’ve been wearing the same worn-down t-shirt, using the same rusty pen for well over a decade. Through each new chapter of my life, with each new acquaintance, this subject would from time to time become a friendly laughing matter. My peers would frequently fail to understand why I couldn’t discard what they perceived as trash. However to me, these weren’t simple belongings. Together we went through thick and thin. These objects became the incarnation of my feelings, and those feelings are my own incarnation. I believe that time is akin to a virus infecting our memory. It forces alteration and constraint upon it. It is so precious to me, and I do everything in my power to preserve it. Emotions transcend changes of time and space. 

My work stems from my love of ancient cartography. Particularly those that used to pinpoint the location of sea monsters. Those creatures were often the culmination of collective imagination. People of this era had a very limited knowledge of the world surrounding them. My curiosity drew me to studying the implantation of fake memories, which in turn gave birth to my series ‘Tell a Story’. This series of listed artworks began in 2014 through installations, videos, and other art expression platforms. 

In French, the word ‘history’ has a different meaning whenever the first letter is a capital H or not.

According to the sociologist Halbwachs, History insures its own perennity in collective memory though commemorations, stone carvings, various artworks, and a plethora of other means. When giving those supports artistic attributes, I display my own thoughts, memories and emotions in a virtual museum which provides a unique perspective and an opportunity to create new collective memories while observing my artworks. Meanwhile, those punctual exhibitions know no borders, allow me to scratch that collection itch and stockpile my thoughts and emotions. They end-up listed, archived and preserved. 

‘Wu You’ sound like ‘Wuyo’, which means ‘something that can exists between utopia and reality’. Wu Yan can also mean ‘I have’. The latter can also sound like the word ‘nothing’. Going from the state of nothingness to that of becoming something is the artistic process through which my art takes shape. 

In 2022, I temporarily gave-up on my art installment ‘Emotional expression and scenography in paintings’ to focus on painting on raw wood planks and blank background. I then proceeded to delete a few images, rearrange some to make them feel like words in a bid to create somewhat of a narration. In the same vein as the ‘traffic accidents’ exhibition organized by the famous commissary Jean Hubert Martin at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2016, I use images that leave a deep impression on me daily to capture a perpetual flow of ideas and inspiration. I believe this entire process is a quest to find a certain order in the ever-chaotic space-time. This chaos creates a maze that becomes a perfect fit for that background provided by the natural grain of a raw wood plank, it gives the illusion of a slow-moving stream, a sense of vastness, poetry, a continuum in my art. 

My creative process is analogous to the one I was using to create a world when I was little. It is a mental space inspired by Michel Foucault’s thoughts in is heterotopia in 1976 as well as Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel. In my mind, I picture a bunch of images in tiny individual pockets, they are floating freely. I close them up and let them drift away in no particular order, thus creating an endless source of ideas, a sea of thoughts.