Qi Zhuo born in 1985, Fuxin, Liaoning. He graduated from the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans, the Geneva University of Art and Design, and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Limoges, and has long developed his practice across multiple cultural contexts. His work focuses on the disjunctions between material, history, and cultural perception, responding to misunderstanding, fragmentation, and uncertainty with an open and inclusive attitude that views them as sources of creative potential.
Qi Zhuo is adept at orchestrating materials such as ceramics, glass, and metal, seeking subtle balances between their distinct material properties and the historical experiences they carry. Rather than erasing their origins or cultural references, he respects the traditions and memories embedded within each material. Through processes of transformation, juxtaposition, and reconstruction, he allows these materials to generate layered and ambiguous meanings within new contexts.
As a Chinese artist living long-term abroad, Qi Zhuo occupies a dual position as both “the other” and a reflective observer of his own cultural background. On the one hand, he approaches surrounding social and cultural structures from the perspective of an outsider; on the other, he continually reconsiders the place of his own culture within contemporary conditions. The differences, misreadings, and slippages that arise from the collision of cultural languages are not treated as obstacles, but instead become methods for establishing connection. Accordingly, his work deliberately offers viewers various “incorrect” points of entry, allowing the act of viewing to unfold through surprise and delay.
Beneath the humorous and poetic surfaces of Qi Zhuo’s works lies a dense field of cultural tension. Rather than offering definitive explanations, he uses shifts and transformations between materials to invite viewers to experience, through looking, the mutable relationships between history, belief, and lived reality.