ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Cui Jinzhe, whose pen name is Qiu Shi, is a painter, poet, and multidisciplinary artist who has been painting, writing and practising music since her childhood. Jinzhe was born and raised in Dalian, China, where she earned a BA (Visual Communication) at School of Arts Design from Dalian University of Foreign Languages and a MA (Mixed Media) at Dalian Polytechnic University. In 2008, Jinzhe moved to Canada to continue her studies and work as an independent artist in Edmonton. Her work explores the integration between visual art, poetry, and interdisciplinary practice, often within an interactive public context.

Jinzhe's creation mainly focuses on three themes: to observe present daily life and nature surroundings, and create paintings and texts inspired by the intuitive imagination and the inner cognition; based on diverse Chinese classical literature or ancient wisdom sutras, to create paintings and texts that combine the ancient inspiration and traditions within her personal contemporary art language; starting from painting and poetry practice, to derive a new contemplative process and artistic experience for self-realization and community transformation through live performances and the interaction with multiple disciplines and diverse audience context. Experimenting the traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy elements with skillfully rendered images and diverse, decorative elements: details from Buddhist symbols, characters in the ancient myth legend and Chinese auspicious patterns which are built and disassembled within the abstracted, accidental landscapes of ink blots and spills, Jinzhe explores how patterned, decorative elements dissolve into an ink-splashing-landscape. She is interested in constructing a unique, fantasy, and sometimes chaos world which reflects her daily contemplation on nature and life. Encountering images of characters, realistic and fantastic, within the risk of disintegration and destruction, she is examining a new painting language between traditional meditative beauty and contemporary dynamic vitality.

Jinzhe's legendary figures are at times united and at other times mutated and revealed in their transitory, shifting, and contingent forms. She often derives her painting figures into clay masks, paper puppets or wood installation to construct unique performance space in diverse context with public audience. Aspiring to benefit all beings through artistic creation, Jinzhe practices to imagine and construct a diverse artistic realm without time that integrates with the presence of contemporary life, the heritage from ancient wisdom, and the manifestation for our future.

Deep thanks to Edmonton Arts Council, City of Edmonton, Canada Council for the Arts, Access Copyright Foundation, Edmonton Heritage Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, Government of Saskatchewan, City of Saskatoon, Hemera Foundation, Zen Mountain Monastery, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Mactarggart Collection, Bruce Peel Special Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Siddhartha's Intent and everyone like you who have made Jinzhe' s various projects possible and be seen.

Deep thanks to the traditional land on which I reside, is in Treaty Six Territory. Many thanks to the love, kindness and wisdom of the people on this land from the bottom of my heart.

Deep thanks to all awakened ones in all time and space who hold and inspire me to practice art as the nourishment for all beings' liberation and enlightenment.