Photographed by Laura Gale

Mengyao Qin is a Chinese artist living and working in the UK.

Mengyao Qin uses painting as a language to offer clarity beneath the surface of words. In the landscape of consciousness, painting can reach and illuminate places where words can not. Painting is both her handling and a fuse of indescribable sensation and contemplation. She balances the tension and space between uncertainty and rationality in her practice.

She draws inspiration from the motion, passion, and bodily expression of dance and treats her painting as a space in the theater. Applying gestural brushstrokes and rhythmic composition, her work sits at the convergence of music, dance, and painting, inviting the viewer to feel the work in a visceral way. Her language of abstract painting thus leads the audience through less contaminated perception to experience the art and the world around them more sensuously and immediately.

Her practice explores how performance, painting, and music are intertwined and can be transformed into one another. Her painting contains the motion, emotion, and energy from dance. Through performance, she reignites the tension and rhythm inspired by painting. She also transforms her painting into clothing that she wears during performances. Originally inspired by the body, the painting returns to it, once again becoming an instrument of movement.

Her work has been exhibited in Chinese National Academy of Arts, The 23rd Art Beijing Expo, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery, Candid Art Trust, Zari Gallery, Birmingham & Midland Institute, Stryx Gallery, Zhejiang West Lake Gallery, Sichuan Art Museum ,Yantai City Gallery, Nanchong Changyu Art Gallery…