Ruya
Qian

About Ruya Qian

Ruya Qian is made in Suzhou, developed in San Francisco, California and based in Shanghai. Her artistic practice utilizes the medium of photography, moving images and installation to explore the dichotomies and tensions of perception, whether it is triggered by society or the individual. Heavily mining the legacy of artist self-portraiture, Ruya embeds and re-positions her own self into the composition of her images. Exploiting the duality embodied in every human being, she strives to negotiate the private and dark spheres of the inner self against the public self that must conform to the stringent social expectations in order to work and survive. Ruya boldly pushes the trope of duality against the expected parameters of sex and gender, even in the present day where the LG (of LGBTQ) is socially accepted but the BTQ is still not. Ruya’s work eloquently and poignantly addresses and decenters the periphery by enfolding the margin into the central. Unobtrusively yet seamlessly, it is time to embrace the humanity in each of us as we stop to engage in the visual narrative of Ruya’s untold personal yet universal story witnessed through the lens of Ruya Qian’s powerful vision.

Ruya Qian received her BA from Shanghai Jiaotong University and MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in California, USA. Her artistic practice is centered on photography moving images and installation. She was the finalist of Beijing’s prestigious Three Shadows’ Photography Award in 2016 and was Fotofilmic shortlist in 2017 and 2018 as well as the receipient off the China Young Elite Artist in 2018, among others. She was invited to participated in the large-scale Ningbo Photography Week in 2018 and 2010. Her moving images were included in “The Gallery Project” at the 2018 Armory Show in New York.