dialogue
Qian Zhong | Artist
November 2025
6 min read
Through fragmented forms and shimmering surfaces, Qian Zhong explores how female identity is shaped and fractured by the gaze. Her paintings turn beauty into resistance beauty that unsettles rather than pleases, glamour that conceals as much as it reveals. Each painting becomes an emotional record of fear, desire, and defiance, speaking to what often remains unspoken.
Adorned yet obscured, her figures lure the viewer before breaking the illusion of ease. The shine reveals its own fragility, exposing tension between desire and discomfort, visibility and self-protection.
Beyond the canvas, Zhong extends her practice into community work, using art to connect and question. Her work invites us to look closer, not for perfection, but for the truths hidden beneath the surface.
Qian Zhong. Photo by Yiling Liu.
Your work often addresses female identity and desire, what draws you to these themes?
”Because I’m a woman, I naturally stay alert to other women’s experiences. It’s easier for me to feel their emotions, sometimes too easily.
In 2017, China was shaken by a kindergarten child abuse case, and in the same year, Taiwanese writer Lin Yihan took her own life after publishing Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise, a novel based on her real experience of sexual assault.
Those events hit me hard. They exposed something dark but familiar, how violence and silence coexist around us. These incidents aren’t isolated; they happen every day, quietly eroding our sense of safety and trust.
That year changed how I saw the world. I began to paint about female identity and desir, not as slogans, but as emotional records of fear, confusion, and resistance.”
Qian Zhong, Party series, Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm each, 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
How do adornment and obscurity work together in your compositions?
“In my work, adornment often captures attention first, the dress, the surface, the beauty. But as the viewer tries to understand, they’re met with resistance, the image is fragmented, emotionally distant. This tension disrupts the traditional dynamic of “gazing” and “being gazed at,” making the act of looking itself unstable and uneasy.”
I deliberately exaggerate decorative elements, pushing them from attractive to uncomfortable - too smooth, too still, too perfect. Their artificiality becomes visible, revealing a kind of emotional dissonance beneath the surface. It invites the viewer to ask: what fractures of identity and feeling are hidden behind this gloss?
The fragmentation of the body further breaks the illusion of wholeness. The viewer can’t see a complete figure, nor connect emotionally through facial expression. This absence mirrors reality, how women are often divided by social labels, roles, and expectations, their identities constantly shaped and fractured by the gaze.”
Qian Zhong, I could be forever, oil on canvas,120 x 120, 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Do you see glamour itself as a kind of symbol in your work?
”Yes. In my paintings, glamour operates as both attraction and defense. The glittering dresses, sequins, metallic sheen, and saturated color blocks form a visual language that seduces the viewer at first glance. These surfaces seem to promise beauty and desire, a world of charm and fashion, yet they quickly betray their own artificiality. The glossy skin, mannequin-like bodies, and emotionally detached gestures expose glamour as something constructed, almost performative.
I see it as a kind of armor - dazzling but fragile - a way of hiding under the very thing that draws attention. At the same time, I also think of glamour as a stain: something you want to erase but can’t. It clings to the surface, impossible to remove, both alluring and uncomfortable. In that contradiction, glamour becomes a metaphor for the tension between exposure and concealment, desire and self-protection.”
Installation view: Qian Zhong, Party series, exhibited at RCA2025 Degree show, 2025. Photo by Gordon Hack.
What is different about creating for communities versus gallery audiences?
”Public work needs clarity, it speaks to everyone. In 2023, I co-founded an art collective with a few artist friends in my hometown, focusing on community-driven actions rather than one-time “events.” We wanted to explore how art could exist beyond the gallery, as something that actively participates in the sustainable growth of local life.
That experience changed me a lot. I’m usually introverted, but the project forced me to talk with different people every day, residents, shop owners, children, and sometimes strangers on the street. It made me realize how much I enjoyed those conversations, and how art could create genuine connections outside the studio. It gave me a new perspective on what “public” really means.
Gallery work, on the other hand, can whisper, hide, or contradict itself. One is about communication and accessibility; the other is about ambiguity and introspection. Both are necessary, they complete each other.”
Installation view: Qian Zong, Party series, exhibited by Art Works Gallery. Photo courtesy of Art Works Gallery.
How do you handle the vulnerability of exposing such personal themes publicly?
“I don’t see my work as confession. It’s not about me, it’s about something collective, something that floats in the air but people rarely name. Those emotions — fear, desire, shame — they belong to everyone.
Vulnerability, to me, is not weakness. It’s evidence. I use it to test what can be shown, what can’t, and where the line starts to blur. Once the image is painted, it’s no longer mine, it becomes something else, something shared, maybe even dangerous.
That’s the point. Art shouldn’t comfort; it should stay open, even when it feels exposed.“
Qian Zhong. Photo by Yiling Liu.
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