Having grown up in the Henan province of China, Jing Qin embeds subtle signifiers of cultural collision in her figurative paintings—here a folding screen, there a tiger figurine. Elements of pattern, landscape, and foliage seem to pay homage to Qin’s childhood.

As in Phouthavong’s work, subtle patterns of cultural hybridity underpin the works, reflecting a coexistence of culture. Symbols of Qin’s identity as a Tennessean exist here too—there are symbols of the southern United States, such as the Flannery O’Connor novel strewn nearby an array of busts painted in varied levels of abstraction.

It is through these cultural clues that Qin establishes context—an atmosphere in which her surreal, disjointed narratives take place. Subjects of ambiguous gender and ethnicity seem to populate the unconscious space of Qin’s canvas, which she fittingly dubbed “non-logical space.” These characters become actors in ambiguous dramas culled from Qin’s dreams and fantasies, which manage to be both mundane and mysterious. Each piece is charged with a palpable tension; the viewer becomes immersed in the dream as they try to pin down a narrative—and are left with more questions than answers.

Jing Qin(b.1989, China) is an artist raised in Henan province, China. She holds a BFA from Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Friend of the Artist, Studio Visit, 1314 Art Magazine(China) and Young Space. She has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Field Plus residency program(Chongqing, China)

She has been included in SPRING/BREAK art show, which is the curator driven art fair during Armory Arts Week NYC 2018 and has been awarded as the semifinalist from the emerging artist competition by Barnes Foundation, Art Sanctuary, partnering with Rush Arts Gallery in Philadelphia. She has been featured in exhibitions at the Art Museum of Sichuan University and her work will be upcoming in a solo booth at the Wuhan Natural History Museum(Wuhan, China)