Rong Bao (b.1997, China) is an artist who is currently based in London completing her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She used to study Public Sculpture at the China Academy of Art and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago after being awarded the Distinguished Scholarship. On 2022 summer, she finished a PHD Summer School about Commoning Curatorial and Artistic Education from Zurich University of the Arts.
In 2022, Rong Bao was awarded the Top 10 of China UCCA Lab x Perrier New Emergency Artist and get into UK New Contemporaries 2022 Shortlist. In 2020, she was awarded Art Nova 100. In 2017 she was awared First Prize in China (Hui’an) International Public Sculpture Creation Camp.
Rong’s work has been shown in exhibitions all around the world, including ‘EXPO CHICAGO 2022’, Navy Pier, Chicago (2022); ReA! Art Fair, Via Ruggero Boscovich, Milan (2022); Muddy Mudlarks, Candid Arts Trust, London(2022); ’It’s All Fun Until’, Safehouse, London (2022); ‘We Won’t Stop Working’, SET Woolwich Gallery, London (2022); ‘Naturisms’ at 399 Hornesy Road, London (2021), ‘Street/Walk&Talk’ at West Carroll Ave, Chcago (2021); ’Art Nova 100 10th Anniversary Exhibition’, Guardian Art Center, Beijing (2020); ‘Art Bash 2019’ , Site Gallery, Chicago (2019), etc. Rong was also invited as a visiting tutor to provide art workshops and 1v1 tutorial for the University of Westminster Mixed Media department and also as a guest artist to hold an art event for ‘Walkative Society’ in early 2022. As a group leader, her project “Design for Non-Human Kinds, Toys for Elephants” was interviewed by NBC News in 2019.
Her works are using different materials to visualize the rebellion to nowadays micro-power by reversing the original function of everyday objects and putting them into a different context situation. By exaggerating the feeling of defamiliarization, she wants to encourage audiences not only to discover and experience vulnerability, but also to be tricked, and further to question the convention of this world, to discover the discourses of power behind.
