“I never get lost because I always have a map in my head.”—QIU Zhijie
Read MoreBorn in Fujian Province, China, in 1969, QIU Zhijie has created a formidable career and presence as a multidisciplinary artist, critic and curator. Drawing from his expansive knowledge of Chinese art and aesthetics, from ancient to modern, practice to theory, QIU straddles the distinction between artistic practice focused on the aesthetic legacies of Chinese tradition, and critical dialogues with the political and theoretical themes common to the art of the present era. The encyclopedic vision QIU brings to his imaginative mappings of the human world, creating fantastic mind-scapes crossing categories cultural, political, institutional and more, open up systems of knowledge that invite the participation of all imaginative minds.
QIU's recent projects include his curation of the Chinese Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and his commissioned project for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, for which he created a site-specific six-panel map as part of the exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World. In spring 2019, his majour solo exhibition “Qiu Zhijie: Mappa Mundi” was on view at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s “Mapping the World Project” to date.
Text courtesy Hanart TZ Gallery.
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