We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jingqi Steinhiser. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jingqi below.

Jingqi , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

The key to this question is the word professionally. Like most painters, I had a strong interest in painting, drawing, and making images on textbooks since pre-school. It wasn’t until I had to sit down and select a college that I realized how much the practice, time, and dedication meant to me. That was when I decided to pursue painting professionally. I’m very glad that my parents asked and warned me again and again if this was something I wanted as a career. Being mentally prepared and knowing how difficult it is to be in the creative field is the first step; all other challenges come after that dedication.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a multimedia painter born in China and raised in Mongolia. I received my MFA in painting at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and BFA in painting at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

I grew up in a family of diplomats, a learning journey that mutated across geographies. Born in China, I lived a nomadic life in Russia, Mongolia and South Korea before coming to the USA. I’ve never stayed anywhere more than six years. My current work looks at animal patterning, gaming designs and power structure behind pop cultural symbols and scenarios in late capitalism. My paintings are uncanny and survey the denial of narration and the interruption of the audience’s act of reading through an interwoven relationship of surface environment and humor.

Globalization, as an erasure, tends to unify cultural specificities. It invents homogeneity and conversely offers complexity, promoting new ideas about personal freedom, class, identity, and of course, taste as a reflection of imperialist conditions. Not being able to anchor or locate who we are as a person, where we want to settle, and how we can process our relationship with our own history have become some of the most common issues. This is also where my practice comes into place. Currently, I’m exploring and diving into the realm of painting to research on three topics: Animals as cultural motifs, language as a visual and verbal tool of communication, and imagined spaces as sanctuaries for lost identities.

If you’ve seen my work before, you would notice there’s a lot of traces of animals. Growing up as a nomad in Mongolia, travel was a core part of our world as well as the animals we relied on for food, transportation, and companionship on our long journeys. Through movement and migration I learned there is never a destination. We moved in search of betterment, and to find a genuine sanctuary. But through our journeys, I felt displacement; a fragmenting that has allowed me to understand true alienation.

Having received art education from not only my home country China but also Mongolia and the US, I am keenly aware of the pedagogical potential of cross-cultural learning experiences. It has, at the same time, created a lot of “barriers” for me. One surface level example is I’ve always had a hard time locating the chemical element Helium in English, since my foundational studies were done in China. It’s also hard for me to phrase the art movement Surrealism in Mandarin because I studied art history in the US. The physical difficulties with language and the constant change in different cultures has chopped my life into pieces and this “barrier” has become a shared common feeling among current and future generations.

Through the medium of painting, I navigate the complexities of identity, belonging, and cultural evolution. I also investigate the animal body as a traditional and modern symbol, questioning how humans depict them in culture, translation and as commodities. These animal allegories provide context to my displacement and seek to answer what is “traditional”, examining the variations through visual culture cues. Through dying, layering, spraying, covering, and wiping out, I highlight the absurdity of alienation. My work constructs imagined spaces that question the history of migration, self-recognition, and the power structure behind scenarios in commodification.

My works have been exhibited internationally, including “Ghost Pounding the Wall” at Roots and Culture in Chicago (forthcoming in September 2024), “Skeleton Pants” from Soloway Gallery, “Waking Life” at Village One Art Gallery, A Happy Beginning” at Latitude Gallery New York, “Genesis” at Chamber’s Fine Arts Gallery;“Texas Paris” at Soka Art Center, Beijing, China; “The Highest Virtue Resembles Water” at United Nations; “Fresh Faces” at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA; Providence Public Library and more. In 2022, I received the Emerging Artist Grant (Nellie Taft Award for Painting) from St. Botolph Club Foundation. I will be participating in an artist-in-residence program ChaNorth in New York this Fall! I was also part of some other artist residencies including MASS MoCA artist-in-residence program and Vermont Studio Center.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part for me is the connection I make with the audience through my work. There was a time an audience member came to me after the opening of my exhibition and said, “I felt the fear of the unknown, tranquility, and sadness from your work.” She had never seen my work or heard my backstory before. I love hearing how people feel about my work and I’m amazed by how much visual language can convey.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Every day when I come into the studio, I sit down and look at what I want to work on today for at least 15 minutes. After I’m ready and I know what materials I need, I will start preparing the palette and all the other tools. Usually before I dive in, I’ll give it another 15-minute look. For the first 15 minutes, I’m recapping, reconnecting and recalling all the research and knowledge I know; then, the second 15 minutes, I’m unlearning everything and going back to a blank piece of paper. Most people have heard this from Picasso: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Knowing your skills, directions and your tools are important, but it’s even more important to forget all that and trust all the things you know and let it happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jingqisteinhiser.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jingqi_wang_steinhiser/

Image Credits
All image credits to Jingqi Wang Steinhiser