About

Qiming Liu is a contemporary artist whose practice is grounded in social critique. This website is a non-commercial public archive of his art and scholarly research, open to sustained viewing, discussion and study.

Painting, performance, video and independent art projects are given equal standing in the art archive. Parallel Research is a dedicated space for presenting the results of Qiming Liu’s own research, with sources clearly identified. Artworks, biographical records and signed critical writing retain their distinct identities.

Liu approaches art as a means of engaging in social critique. Rather than maintaining a single visual style, he changes his methods according to the subject and the form of intervention it requires. Personal experience and public life remain inseparable within this practice.

In his paintings, memory and imagination provide a way to approach historical events through the experience of the individual. Figures, suspended lines and expanses of cloud and water bring questions of vulnerability, power and human fate into view.

His video, performance and independent projects extend these concerns into public space and online networks. Social Media Circle, begun in 2015, draws on images and videos circulating through WeChat to examine the apparent freedom of expression on these platforms, the accumulation of information and the distance between real events and their mediated images.

Liu graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1995 and taught at higher education institutions in China from 1995 to 2006. From 2006 to 2017, he worked as an independent artist in Beijing. He moved to the United States in 2017 and is based in New York.

His practice also encompasses curating and nonprofit arts administration. From 2017 to 2024, he led and managed NYRCA Project, a nonprofit arts organization whose work encompassed social intervention, exhibitions and international artistic exchange. In 2024, he was appointed Artistic Director of the U.S. Golf Art Foundation.

His work has been shown in Asia, Europe and the Americas. His projects include Sensitive Words, Buying Votes, 5·12, Giving You My 272 Days and Nights, and the New York performance series $0.25 Coin · Breath.