Xinqi Tao

Born 1990 in Huzhou(Zhejiang Province), currently being active at Hangzhou and Shanghai

2014 - 2016 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USAMaster of Art in Arts Administration and Policy

SOLO EXHIBITION

2021

Sub-Human Terrarium I: After the Full Moon, Exhibition & Performance, ALLUNEED NOW,Shanghai

Dear Someone, Han House / Guoda City Square, Hangzhou

TAO Xinqi & WU Wenfang Duo Exhibition, The Roof Culture Museum, Hangzhou

GROUP EXHIBITION

2021

Sub-Human Terrarium II: Levitated Landing, special project for exhibition <Human D Era>(exhibition + performance), XIXI LIVE, Hangzhou

2020

Tank Shanghai, Shiny Art Institution, Shanghai

Set-out of Mold Rains II, performance, Jincai Gallery, Hangzhou

Art Nova 100 10th Anniversary Exhibition IN/OUT, Beijing

Shiny Art Animal Crossing Online Exhibition 

2018

Me To, Spring Museum, Shanghai

2017

The Den, Martin Goya Business Gallery, Hangzhou

2016

Versus, Antibody Corporation performance project, invited performer, Chicago Culture Center

OTHERS

2016

The Untitled Space, online exhibition project collaborated with PICA Photo and KADA VR, curator, Shanghai

LIU Wen: Lazarus, curator, Between Art Lab, Shanghai

LIU Jian: Dangerous Edge, curator, Between Art Lab, Shanghai

SAIC MFA Show 2016, co-curator, Sullivan Gallery, Chicago

Parallel Planet: Hip-hop Dance in China, chief curator, C33 Gallery, Chicago

2015

Media Futures, co-curator, Sullivan Gallery, Chicago

Among several her curatorial projects, it’s worth to mention the exhibition Parallel Planet: Hip-hop Dance in China happened in C33 gallery in Chicago. As leading curator, Xinqi had launched this project to discuss hip-hop dance as an art form of one particular culture born in the U.S. and how it had been connecting to, rebuilding and “de-centralizing”, as an “imported visual and technical presence”, in the other cultures under the context of globalization, cultural colonialism and Internet era, as well as to discuss the relationships between underground and formal art world. The exhibition had presented how the Chinese hip-hop culture participants was defined as “the others”, their attempts to follow and re-present the western art form, and meanwhile creatively developed it in the local and gave it rebirth, as well as made it an universal art language to communicate with other cultures. The project also triggered discussions between the hip-hop dance industry and the fields of economic and social realm. Parallel Planet: Hip-hop Dance in China is most likely the first attempt to explore Chinese hip-hop under the western mainstream art world.

Xinqi Tao’s artistic transition from hip-hop dance to her performance art, whose specific work form integrating actions, performing, dance and body, was ultimately driven by the untamed and intrusive nature in her creation, along with a strong personal history perspective and identity consciousness. Through a mode of curated while improvisational happening, her presence and expression in the certain real-world scenarios have, to some extent, violently seized these spaces and transferred them from the daily, certain, realistic scene into a bizarre, uncertain, surreal zone. By the media of body, she is not only eager to create novel images, art language and combined events, but also develops, from inside out, a powerful world view, organizational system, communication method and connecting mode of her own. Xinqi’s artistic practices based on the body have so far created the live performance, visual image, text, installation and public art project. The “sub-human system” she has built continuously explores an interdisciplinary way of art making in the contemporary art field, and by the mean time, supported by her core concept of destructing authenticity of the world, she is devoted to push the audience’s next-level perception and spirit pursuit for the specific hip-hop art and culture through the lens of contemporary art and it’s expressions.

White/Spore is Xinqi’s latest project under Sub-Human concept and attempts to collaborate artists cross-fields in performance, music, fashion, installation and text. Co-working with fashion and material artists WU Wenfang and double bass musician ZHANG Chi, the performance project presents as an information symbion under our current Post-Web context that creators are like connected neuron. The artists are able to maximize their presentation through collision and collaboration.

The performance is divided into three chapters: Born of Spore, Breaking and Words of Spore. It presents the “Spore Sub-Human”’s self-evolution and upgrade in a circulative way from the level of body, consciousness and language, and finally devotes itself to a new round of structuring this new world system. This work projects the artist’s reflection of self-existence, post-human dilemma and system of survival, since the Sub-Human’s concept core is “every-being reflects”, “doubts of authenticity” and “human development’s spiritual predicament”. This building path of collective consciousness is just like the bacterial colony that self-reproduction and replacement unconsciously, then comes the evolution. The spore／fungi is a kind of typical creature that prospers in the rain season. When connecting to the exhibition, as its name “Out of the Rain Season”, it means the spore’s suitable growing environment is broke and it is also a potential external variant for evolvement. White/Spore inherits the artist’s body movement and visual style of Sub-Human performance system, and in certain session it involves other Sub-Human characters that Xinqi has created in her TikTok project - to enable different character/body to “arrive” in the present scene - to blur the boundary between reality and virtual space for the artist’s existence, and also create a conflict of typical art aesthetic and pop culture/mainstream entertainment taste.