Qiu Anxiong

Portrait: Cover and Clean

A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning by Qiu Anxiong is an installation of six black-and-white video projections. Each video depicts a portrait with features changing continuously and quickly into different persons, animals, and symbols. Driven by the evolving contents of the screen itself, this piece showcases the form and material of Qiu’s working method, which relies on precisely planned storyboard sketches drawn in pen on A4 paper. After the narrative is fully formed, Qiu transfers each image by painting it onto a small canvas with acrylic, which can be quickly wiped away to prepare for the subsequent image or element to be painted on top. Such a process distills an aesthetics of over-painting that drives narrative development through changing logical relationships between material and form rather than plot elements.