Based in Northumberland, Qi is an internationally awarded and exhibited artist, illustrator and researcher, as well as a creative and innovative ceramist creating original surrealist narrative works. As part of her PhD in Fine Art and Art History, Qi explored the transformation between 2D and 3D narrative pictures in video installation, which later informed her passion to combine original drawings with ceramics. She is a member of the Northern Potters Association and Associate member of the Craft Potters Association.

 

Qi works primarily with hand-built and thrown high-fire (1220°C) white stoneware with free-hand carved and inlaid original designs. The illustrated works celebrate different carving techniques (Huahua technique in Chinese, or Mishima, and sgraffito) on ceramics and are decorated using decorative slips and underglazes.

 

Qi’s ceramics search for conversations and mutual encouragement between the object and her carved drawings, which are deeply inspired by Taoism and Phenomenology philosophy. The works are known for their quirky, playful and symbolic narrative representation of the transforming identity, human-nature interactions, feminism, and cultural boundaries.

 

Rather than following a well-planned blueprint, Qi free-hand carves the organic shapes she builds, allowing the shape of the clay and drawing determine the composition. Like a spreading vine, her expressive pictures find ways to shape the object, forming the outlines and content, vice versa, to capture the flow of consciousness, self-invented visual narratives and personal emotions. Instead of searching for uniformity and certainty, her ceramics call for a curiosity of the unknown, abnormal and asymmetrical.