We were lucky to catch up with Qiurui Du recently and have shared our conversation below.

Qiurui, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I’m pretty happy. I started drawing when I was very young, but it was just a hobby. Because I like to be alone with myself, when I paint, I can create a world that belongs to me and put my ideas and emotions into my creation. I never thought that I would be engaged in the art industry when I grew up. Even when I was in school, I still didn’t figure out what I wanted to do. I decided to become a professional artist when I was in graduate school. Because I had a solo exhibition in New York after finishing my undergraduate degree, the exhibition got really good feedback, and then I realized that my work is not only for me, it makes people feel different emotions and different thoughts, so I thought, I want to convey my ideas and my voice through my creations. And then to express my emotions, I hope that after seeing my works, people would have a different point of view of the world through my narratives in my artworks. Or something different, like making people’s lives more colorful.

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 an artist, and also the founder of E.E Art Group. I am committed to giving voice to Asian young artists and curating exhibitions to showcase their work. I have had many solo exhibitions around the world and participated in many group exhibitions at important art museums. I collaborated with WWF X Alibaba for Marine environmental protection in 2021. I care about the narrative in my works. I observe life with my unique perspective and bring the hustle and bustle and peculiar temperament of surrounding life into my artworks.
My feelings and emotions are integrated into the vibrant, rich colors and exaggerated, sarcastic forms of expression. Characters with various looks and shapes, and intriguing, quirky stories spring from my wild imagination. Meanwhile, there are ephemeral doubt and bleakness narrated in the delightful glamour. The precise grip of facial expressions and character design properly zoom in on my description of emotions, which intensifies and complicates the absurdity.
My works create a surrealist atmosphere and multiple tensions, leading to changes in ordinary daily things. The pictures are rich, bright, and have a strong sense of fashion, yet reflect the feelings of indifference, emptiness, and alienation among people in the contemporary highly developed commercial civilization. They are like a pop-ism ukiyo-e, which portrays our life while recording my emotions and memories.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I think the best thing you can do on any social media is to post your work and be proud of it. Keep posting your artwork and sharing your creative process with others. What I have been doing is sharing my artwork on my social media to let more people discover my work. When I have exhibitions, I post my show’s information, so that people who are interested in me and my exhibition can know it and arrange a time to go to see my exhibition. Because seeing the work on the Internet is not the same as seeing the work in a gallery or a museum. Anyway, the Internet is just a platform for me to share my work, and hook people’s interests. More importantly, showing your work in an actual space is the point. As I said, Seeing a painting in reality is different from the internet.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

One funny thing is that people always ask me the question of why I always paint about middle-aged women. In fact, at the beginning, I did not want to say that I wanted to speak for middle-aged women, I just drew some people whom I met and things happened to me from childhood to adulthood. Then one day I saw an article about Chinese middle – aged women buying gold because of the economic crises, and also the infamous square dance, Even women of this age in movies and TV dramas are portrayed as evil mothers-in-law. But I think, whether it is a Chinese middle-aged woman or someone else, everyone’s life is colorful and has many sides. Steretypecial middle-aged Chinese women are just a side of many things, and it’s a reflection of a social problem. To use my perspective to change the narrative of people who are being ignored by society in my work, and to tell stories with my life experiences, I want more people to see more colors of this world.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @qiuruidu

Image Credits
Qiurui Du