Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2021
1986
China
Tabula Rasa Gallery
Xiao Hanqiu (b.1986), is a painter and a poet.
Xiao obstinately depicts quotidian objects on a small scale and usually in pairs. Delicate and ethereal, her unique pictorial language creates the aura of a storied world.
“The ginger yellow is what brings delight to me the most.
The painting needs to be looked at horizontally, it is an attempt to emphasising on the colour palette."
With four collections of poems published, Xiao also considers herself an amateur poet. Her quietly charged pictures are poems to the mind’s eyes.
"Stories are too slow, poems are fast, the scene cut to the present
Delicate and vibrant, like a snake egg, its structure unleashed, like lily-of-the-valley
Morning light and mist have condensed into speed
China roses hang upside down like a waterfall, glistening in traffic jams
Beautiful things are raised, for everyday needs
Roads cannot be two-headed like snakes
Unknown possibilities, and promises, are buried in a sea of fire
Or they seemingly fall, and rest on the sideline"
-Xiao Hanqiu
Xiao Hanqiu (b.1986, Beijing) graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London with the MFA degree in 2011 and received her BFA degree from Leeds University in Leeds in 2008. She lives and works in Beijing, China.
Her recent solo exhibitions include There May Be No Pearls in This Shell, Leo Gallery, Shanghai, China (2020); Skating Through the Gallery with Tricksy Snakes, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing, China (2018); That’s Quite Something, Canton Gallery, Guangzhou, China (2018); and Self-portrait, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing, China (2016).
Since 2008, Xiao has participated in several group exhibitions in China and overseas, such as Le Romancier Naïf et Le Romancier Sentimental, Asia Now, Paris, France (2016); Spotlight, Bund 18 gallery, Shanghai, China (2012); From Zero to Hero, Star Gallery, Beijing, China (2009); Independent Media Exhibition, L.I.M.E., London, UK (2008), just to name a few.
Her major publications include collections of poems: A dream comes true (2019), Three Minutes to Midnight Flower Thief (2018), Four Hearts (2015).