Qinyao Dai

Qinyao Dai’s practice embodies her personal experiences and memories, exploring the translation of sensations through a series of symbolism and painterly gestures. She expresses life’s difficulties, focusing on the themes of isolation, death and trauma, conveying feelings of vulnerability, helplessness, alienation, discomfort and awkwardness. Her works capture an uncanny affect with a surrealist tendency, overlapping with a sentimental narrative in her imaginary space.

In Qinyao’s figurative paintings, she employs animals and soft toys as the protagonist, serving as her alter egos. Animals help to reveal both cultural and personal symbolism: they are neutral, silent and marginalised, both observed and observing us. Through the eyes of an animal, we only find loneliness in ourselves. Titles hint at the messages carried in the figuration, implying the meanings behind her paintings. They contrast with the seemingly cute and innocent style, revealing an upsetting reality.

Qinyao’s painterly gesture aims to create a feeling of softness and fragility. The brush marks indicate a sign of stroking, erasing and burying, producing a feeling of intimacy and gentleness: the process of applying paint on a canvas is similar to blushing one’s cheek. With the uncanny narrative, another layer of strangeness is generated, building a contrast between the innocent and the disturbing, the cute and the evil. A soft texture embraces its colour, emotions spread into the narrative, blending and bonding together, silently telling a story: to be innocent and to lose innocence. To abandon and to be abandoned. To run, to escape, to cover from a tragedy. To scream, to tear, then to wake up.