b. 1972, Sichuan, China

Qiu Anxiong is part of a new generation of Chinese artists synthesizing Chinese culture and history with global contemporary art through addressing new utopias produced by real conditions of globalization. After studying at the Sichuan Art Academy in Chongqing, China and graduating with emphases in contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture from University of Kassel’s College of Art in Germany, Qiu rose to international prominence in the 2006 Shanghai Biennial with a video work titled ‘New Book of the Mountains and Seas’. An animated ink work that appropriates the ‘Book of the Mountains and Seas’, a classical text mapping out the numinous geography of ancient China, ‘New Book of the Mountains and Seas’ addresses the relationship between contemporary Chinese subjects and their natural environment through images of paradise and apocalypse.