Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin
Bio: (b. 1989) was born and bred in Guangzhou, China. She studied History and Art at the Affiliated High School of SCNU, Guangzhou, earned a BA in Communication Theories and Art in Denison University, Ohio. Her works were shown or presented in The Jewish Museum, New York (2014), HB Station of Times Museum, Guangzhou (2014), Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University, New York (2014) and ROY G BIV, Columbus (2012). She received the Lotos Foundation Prize of 2014.
Artist Statement:
Can you talk about your research?
Research for me means organizing and reorganizing things, making and breaking connections, looking and mostly looking away. I research a lot because I am very afraid to make art, or making art is making me very afraid, so I research all the time as a procrastination strategy. I think sleeping helps a lot with my research. When I am half asleep and half awake I always get strange ideas: for example, I heard a voice saying “past is present is future” once. I think it is because we are so addicted to information nowadays and don’t have time to process it. Only in between dreams does your brain start to work on the digestion. A part of my research is to predict the near future. For example, I would write about what will happen tomorrow, and write down again what had actually happened when the day had passed. But because you wrote it down before, it has already changed what will happen in the future. If I wrote down “tomorrow I will get a mint-flavor ice cream,” whether I get it or not it is still a response to the decision of the day before. So, where does the future begin?