Chinese Contemporary Artist Qiao Xiangwei
Visual artist Qiao Xiang Wei serves up symbolism the same way a rapper lays down a clever metaphor: with flourish, style, and a little bit of attitude. As an artist born post-90s, he can’t seem to help himself. After all, this is the 21st century. Minimalism is dead, and media has filled the void. Yet, instead of fighting against this trend, Qiao Xiang Wei leans into it… hard. Each corner of the Xi’an-based painter’s canvas is a colorful collage crammed full of recurring characters that fight for our attention. Carousels, paper fans, Terracotta warriors, they all seem to hint at a larger narrative at play, if we as an audience can only concentrate long enough to figure it out. In this sense, the scope of his work is nearly cinematic in nature, and upon repeated viewings, reveals itself to be a deeply resonant, if not discordant, melody of his generation’s hopes, ambitions, frustrations, and curiosities.
The Artist as a Student
The young Qiao Xiang Wei is not yet thirty, but in his discipline and insight, displays remarkable maturity and, to wit, a crazy creative output. Since enrolling in the Xi’an academy of fine arts in 2012, he has produced nearly 800 paintings by his own estimation. A remarkable feat by any standard, and even more remarkable still when judged against his own. Traces of this work ethic are perhaps first apparent in his seminal Two-Hundred Day Plan (双百计划) started in 2016, which would ultimately provide the “breakout” moment for himself and his craft.
Frustrated at his progress as a painter and still stuck within the less prestigious print-making college of the Xi’an academy of fine arts, Qiao rebelled against his teacher’s (and father’s) insistence on realistic paintings, and set out to create two small paintings a day on paper, for 200 days. “The Chinese name of this series refers to the dream of every Chinese student to score well in school,“ Qiao says, "and is also a reference to Mao Zedong’s ‘Double-Hundred Policy’ regarding the combination of literature and the sciences.”
As the product of the one child policy, Qiao has been subjected to a number of pressures unique to his generation, academic being obvious. But the weight of history also exerts a significant, if not confusing, tug on the leg of a generation swept up within the promise of a future that bares little to no resemblance to that of their parents’. Exposure to media, both foreign and domestic, further complicates this relationship, and each of these disparate elements seem to filter into the periphery of Qiao’s mind, and by extension his canvas, as he experiments with various media formats such as spray paint, pastels, charcoal, and more. “In the very beginning when I was drawing (Two-Hundred Day Plan), there was no purpose. I was simply searching.” Qiao claims. “But in the process of drawing and painting everyday, it became similar to how rappers search for beats online. There are thousands of beats, and they are all looking for their flow, for their feeling of attachments.”
The Artist As a Musician
By his own account, Qiao was no longer filtering, he was “free-styling” (his words). And in this manner, symbolism became as integral to his artistic lexicon as poetic motifs are to novelists, or clever wordplay to rappers. “As I began to introduce new elements into my paintings, it became like lyrics I could repeat and improve upon over time.” He claims. And while rebellious undercurrents of “hip-hop” or “western subculture” occasionally surface within his frames, it would be a mistake to over-simplify his work as “Pop-Art” as some critics suggest. It is far too solemn, and shares virtually no reference to the colorful-candor of his contemporaries in this field. Nor is it Dada-esque, despite sharing some of the absurd aesthetic features of this movement. In its own self-referential and deeply personal stylistic tendencies, Qiao’s practice of free-association, aka “free-styling,” most closely resembles that of the Surrealists. This is further reinforced by his creative process, which, based on the symptoms and methods he describes, are a verifiable diagnosis of synesthesia.
The Artist as Auteur
Although initially frustrating (growth always is), Qiao’s
dedication to his Two-Hundred Day Plan paid off. In the end, he completed over _______[1] works of art, achieved his goal of attending a prestigious fine arts program, and succeeded in developing “a new artistic language” whereby the process, not the result, became important. Additionally, he also inadvertently provided his audience with a more appropriate framework by which we can judge his entire creative cannon- not as a painter, but as an artist in the purest, most abstract sense of the word.
For example, the dreamy iterations of his Two-Hundred Day Plan and Pool series (2013-2016) reminiscent of Mao Yan read more like early mixtapes than paintings. They give a glimpse of an artist struggling to find his voice and flow over a backing track of tumultuous change. Likewise, through the deeper political themes apparent in his more recent Trojan Horse and large-scale Game series, Qiao presents himself less like a free-styling rapper and more like a skilled auteur, the works carrying themselves with the assured confidence of more challenging concept albums or films.
The Artist as a Gamer
For Qiao Xiang Wei, each period of rapid growth is punctuated by a distinct style or theme that, in retrospect, seems nearly premeditated in how well they link together and develop as an entire body of work. Symbols appear and reappear within his oeuvre the way an acclaimed director may recast his favorite actors in new roles, and as Qiao matures as an artist, he becomes more adept at recognizing these patterns and maximizing their potential. Metaphors become heavy, take on weight, gather significance, and Qiao Xiang Wei brings them to life. “Sometimes, I think as a painter, I’m more like a director.” Qiao says. “As a director, I can set up a theme, and all the elements I paint are like my actors, I place and animate them within the scope of a larger play.”
But what, exactly, is the theme of this larger “play” Qiao seems to be orchestrating, and who is his intended audience? Qiao’s work is ultimately a performance of the self on an ever-changing stage, a dreamlike theater where different symbols, metaphors, and personal understandings blur the boundaries between audience and actor, player and NPC. In both appearance and practice, his work retains a certain “video-game” quality that is not accidental. Video games are to China in the 2020s what theater was to the European Surrealists of the 1920s: an escape, a mask, an arena for acting out our subconscious desires. And with this in mind, perhaps the message is not as important as the medium. Whether in his perceived role as a rapper, a director, an actor, or a painter, Qiao is merely “playing the game,” and as an artist, it’s a pleasure to watch him keep levelling-up.
•Text by Rory Mencin
•All images courtesy of the artist
•All quotes conducted in interviews between artist and writer in (English and Chinese), 2020-2021
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