Qi-Yao

QI-YAO

七幺

Qi-Yao is an artist-researcher based in Loughborough, UK.

Through performative practice, she critically explores the entanglements between the body, social structures, and systems of control across performance, sound, video, and installation. Her engagement with embodied experience and individual agency results in acute attention to both the conceptual and the material, the provocative as well as the uncanny, positioning the body as a site of interference capable of unsettling normative logics within contemporary societies.

CONTACT

q.chen4@lboro.ac.uk

CV

[Download PDF]

Education

PhD in Creative Arts (in progress)，
Loughborough University,
2025-present

MFA in Experimental Art,
Central Academy of Fine Arts,
2020-2023

BFA in Sculpture,
Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
2014-2019

Exhibitions

B-side: Hidden Track,
BIE Box,
Beijing,
2025

Charging Guide，
Ming Contemporary Art Museum,
Shanghai,
2025

Valhalla Unconstrained，
Mix Art Lab,
Beijing,
2024

Citywalk Together，
Entrance Space,
Zhengzhou,
2024

The Stone of Her Mountain, Guardian Art Centre,
Beijing,
2023

Great Compassion Cosmos,
Beginning Gallery,
Guizhou,
2023

Blue Dream,
Nordic Contemporary Art Centre,
Xiamen,
2023

Groups as Methods,
Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum,
Beijing,
2023

Youth Today,
798 Art Centre,
Beijing,
2023

Material Girl,
China Culture Centre,
Sydney,
2022

Accessible Art Program,
Cre8ive Academy of Fine Art,
Beijing,
2022

Art Nova 100 Annual Exhibition,
Guardian Art Center,
Beijing,
2021

Hereditary Territory,
Powerlong Museum,
Shanghai,
2021

Without MOI in Future,
Nine Art Museum,
Beijing,
2021

Hyper Hospital,
Vis Art Center,
Beijing,
2021

Fried Tomatoes & Tomatoes,
Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
Wuhan,
2021

Boredom is the beginning of every authentic act,
SIMULACRA,
Beijing,
2021

Zeng Zhushao Sculpture Exhibition,
China Sculpture Museum,
Datong,
2019

Golden Age III,
Star Art Space,
Wuhan,
2019

Resonance for 99 Years,
Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
Wuhan,
2019

The Train Art Festival,
Triangle Road of Jiulongpo Railway,
Chongqing,
2018

The 3rd Hubei Youth Sculpture Biennale,
Wanlin Art Museum,
Wuhan,
2017

Considerable Elites,
Chinese Art Palace,
Shanghai,
2017

Memorial for a Boat,
Pier 1 at Redsteel City,
Wuhan,
2017

The Dream of Cyan,
Chinese Sculpture Research Institute,
Qingdao,
2016

Honors &
Awards

China Scholarship Council X Loughborough University Joint Scholarship,
2025

Nominee,
Art Nova 100,
2021

First Prize Scholarship,
Central Academy of Fine Arts,
2021

Second Prize Scholarship,
Central Academy of Fine Arts,
2020

Nominee,
Zeng Zhushao Sculpture Fellowship Award,
2019

Nominee,
10th New Star Art Awards,
2019

Second Prize,
Fine Sculpture Fellowship,
2018

Second Prize Scholarship,
Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
2018

Nominee,
The 3rd Hubei Youth Sculpture Biennale,
2017

National Encouragement Scholarship,
Ministry of Education of P.R. China,
2017

First Prize Scholarship,
Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
2017

Collections

Central Academy of Fine arts Art Museum, Beijing, CN
2023

Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
Wuhan, CN
2019

Hubei Institute of Fine Arts,
Wuhan, CN
2015

Residencies

Nordic Contemporary Art Center,
2023

Twins Museum,
2022

Last Updated 24.10.31

SELECTED WORKS

[Available as PDF]

Spirit

2023

Single-channel 2k video, color, stereo sound

Dimensions variable

07’30”

Set to the rhythmic sound of breathing, Spirit captures a yoga practitioner unexpectedly accompanied by a swarm of robotic vacuums.

The machines’ systematic cleaning paths intersect with the practitioner’s poses, choreographing a dynamic interplay between chaos and control. This friction transforms the session into a quasi-religious ritual, merging the pursuit of physical wellness with technological intervention.

Crowded (2022)

The Switch (2021)

Balance (2021)

Chord (2021)

Tugging (2022)

Survival(I)

2021-2022

Archival pigment prints,
single-channel video

Dimensions variable

Survival (I) (2021–2022) is a series of performance documentation created amidst the recurring COVID-19 lockdowns and strict containment measures in Mainland China.

During this period of suspended social interaction, daily life was profoundly restructured. Through these recorded actions, the work investigates how individuals navigate confinement to maintain a sense of self. It explores the complex friction between external social constraints and the internal preservation of physical and mental well-being.

Charge (2021)

Insomnia (2021)

Piloting (2022)

Jingzhe (2022)

Survival(II)

2021-2022

Archival pigment prints,
single-channel video

Dimensions variable

This series examines the automobile as a distinct social architecture. Framed as "boxes," the vehicles serve not only as physical barriers against the outside world but as the last bastions of freedom of movement.

Survival (II) posits the car as a site of resistance: a mobile sanctuary where the private self can be preserved. Amidst the strictures of the pandemic, these confined spaces paradoxically offer the only true autonomy, transforming the driver’s seat into a crucial vessel of independence.

33.27Mbps

2022

Single-channel video, color, sound

1’21”

33.27Mbps explores the fragility of digital infrastructure. Recorded in Cryptovoxels, the video features an avatar sprinting at a speed that exceeds the network's processing limit of 33.27 Mbps.

As the data stream lags behind the user’s movement, the virtual architecture collapses into glitches and voids. The work visualizes the gap between user agency and technological constraint, ending as the protagonist sinks into a fragmented, loading abyss—an ocean surfacing from the errors of the system.

Canon in G

2020

Single-channel HD Video, color, sound

00’39”

In Canon in G, individuals from varying generations and backgrounds are invited to sing the Chinese national anthem a cappella. The work unfolds as an experiment in collective memory.

Although participants initially question their recollection of the lyrics, the melody triggers an ingrained response. Regardless of pauses or uncertainty, the body takes over, and every participant completes the anthem. The piece reveals how ideology and identity are inscribed not just in the mind, but as a form of muscle memory.

Sound Ashes

2023

Whale recordings, original composition, acousitc foam, tape recorders, cassette tapes, double bass bow, rosin

0’30” (Loop duration)

Dimensions variable

Sound Ashes is a kinetic sound installation that physically erodes a conversation between species.

The 6-meter tape loop features a composite soundscape: underwater recordings of whale songs intertwined with a guitar composition performed by the artist. This melody is written specifically to match the lowered frequencies whales use to survive ocean noise. As the tape circulates against a rosin-coated double bass bow, the friction grinds both the whale's voice and the artist’s musical response into dust.

The accumulation of black debris on the acoustic foam below visualizes the silence left behind by this destruction.

(Commissioned by Nordic Contemporary Art Center)

The Dog Whistle

2020

182-channel video installation

Dimensions variable

(Unexhibited project)

The term "dog whistle" refers to ultrasonic frequencies audible to dogs but typically undetectable by the human ear. The Dog Whistle appropriates this acoustic concept to critique the selective deafness of social control.

The project deconstructs a censored 2020 text regarding the coronavirus outbreak, distributing its fragmented lines among 182 masked volunteers. Intended for simultaneous playback, the work begins as a collective roar of fragmented truths, slowly fading into silence as the sentences end. This auditory decay mirrors the rapid obsolescence of information in a high-frequency information environment. The project remains a "romantic notion"—a resistance where language is deconstructed yet physically preserved within the bodies of the participants.

Paradoxically, the work’s continued prohibition from offline exhibition reinforces its very concept: a sound that exists, yet remains unheard.

The exhibition renderings presented here are AI-generated.

The Fourth Day

2019

Notarized documents, vinyl text

Dimensions variable

The Fourth Day is a performative intervention that tests the absurdity of bureaucratic systems against the backdrop of religious mythology.

Two days before Easter (Good Friday), I successfully obtained a legal "notarization of death" using fabricated documentation. On Easter Sunday—the biblical "third day" of resurrection—I attempted to notarize a "proof of life" to complete the cycle. However, the attempt failed simply because the notary office was closed for the holiday. Consequently, my legal resurrection was deferred to the fourth day (Easter Monday).

The installation presents the official documents alongside the conclusion: "I can die on Friday, but I cannot come back to life on Sunday. Because I am not Jesus, and the notary office is closed."

Suite No.2 For Body

2019

9-channel video installation, color, sound

00’03” (Loop)

Dimensions variable

In Suite No.2 For Body, the artist orchestrates a rhythm of bone and cartilage.

Through a rigorous editing process, the act of joint-cracking is amplified into a rapid, chain-reaction composition. The resulting soundscape—sharp, rhythmic, and explosive—evokes the texture of pyrotechnics, yet remains intimately human. Installed as a corridor, the work envelops the viewer in a sonic passage where the "pop" of the joints dictates the rhythm of movement.

The installation asserts that the scale of sound is inherently "bodily," bridging the gap between internal physiological mechanics and external acoustic space.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

2019

4-channel video installation, color, sound

01’00”

Variable Dimensions

Appropriating the title of the luxurious dish "Buddha Jumps Over the Wall," this work interrogates the primal nature of appetite beneath cultural refinement.

I filmed myself eating voraciously in extreme close-up, utilizing contact microphones to record the sounds of mastication and swallowing as they reverberate through the skull (bone conduction). By externalizing these internal physiological sounds, the installation exposes the grotesque yet mesmerizing mechanics of the human body. It blurs the boundary between the "self" and the "meat," presenting consumption not as a social act, but as a rhythmic, biological compulsion.

Hello, Welcome

2017

30 motion-activated door chimes

Dimensions Variable

Hello, Welcome is a site-specific intervention situated amidst the ruins of Red Steel Dock No. 1 in Wuhan.

The work was created in the wake of a localized trauma: an engineering ship had sunk, displacing the workers who lived on board, clearing the way for the site’s transformation into a trendy riverside promenade. By embedding thirty cheap proximity sensors into the demolition site, I introduced a primitive, repetitive commercial soundscape.

The cheerful, electronic refrain of "Hello, welcome" acts as an ironic overlay, juxtaposing the site's present reality of displacement and decay with its impending commodification.