Qin Ai 秦艾

Qin Ai was born in Nantong City, Jiangsu Province in 1973. She graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Nanjing Art College in 1996. She lives and works in Nanjing.

With a delicate and whimsical painting style, Qin often uses animals as the main characters within her work. Choosing to combine both traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western art spatial compositions, her paintings often juxtapose reality with surrealist elements. The animals she features react with diverse emotions to the progress of human civilization around them, reflecting the artist’s ambivalence about everyday life.

Her works have been collected by numerous museums, including Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum, and by private collections. Qin has exhibited internationally including shows in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Italy. She held her solo exhibition, Close to the Horizon, in 2012, which toured three cities: Taipei, Beijing and Nanjing. Group exhibitions have taken place at the Today Art Museum and the Hive Center for Contemporary Art, both in Beijing.