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Sculpture (MA)

Yuqing Shi

I try to use fragile materials like ceramics and glass to shape a fictional and absurd scene.

Yuqing Shi (b.1998, Suzhou, China) currently lives and works in Hangzhou and London

MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, 2021-2023

BA Sculpture, China Academy of Art, 2016-2021


Selected group exhibitions:

05/2023 Include in the ReA! Art Fair 2023, Milan, Italy

03/2023 The Fading Spaciousness, OXO Tower, London

03/2023 Hung, Drawn & Quartered, Standpoint Gallery, London

11/2022 Spiel Allein, Gallery 46, London

08/2022 Include in the Art Nova 100 青年艺术100, Guardian Art Center, China

03/2022 Earth Tipping Point - Cross-Media Contemporary Art Exhibition 地球临界点, M Space, China

03/2022 It’s All Fun Until... ,Safe House, London

12/2022 We Won’t Stop Showing, SET Woolwich, London

08/2021 Scenic Spot - Never Lie Flat 景区-绝不躺平, X2 Gallery, China

07/2021 the Lake Water in Countercurrent 逆流的湖水, Fuyicang Art Center, China

05/2021 the Unknown Vector - Intertidal Zone 未知向量-潮间带, T Project, China

10/2020 Oriental Physical Property (2020) 东方物性, China Academy of Art, China



Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesSculpture (MA)RCA2023 at Truman Brewery

Truman Brewery, F Block, Ground, first and second floors

"Not just to non-human voices, but to rethink our existence as they relate to all existence."

Yuqing Shi is interested in the uncertainty and fragility of life, finding moments of absurdity in the seemingly mundane everyday. Her work revolves around the easily overlooked objects of everyday life, the insignificant objects that she believes comprise our existence.

"Not just to non-human voices, but to rethink our existence as they relate to all existence." This is what multi-species ethnography and materiality have taught her and are the most important parts of her practice - memory, effect, landscape, time - are tied together in all organisms and act in everyday life.

Her recent practice revolves around the interaction between humans and creatures, using sculpture, photography and installation to shape a fictional and hysterical world - one sits between the cracks of human community life and the ecosystem in which both humans and non-humans are blurred. 

The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.
The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.
The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.
The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.
The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.
The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road.

Medium: glass, clay, hair, steel, resin, crayon

Size: Multiple size

The heavy and tired bodies of flies with the size of a human arm sprawl across the road. Caution lines and triangular road signs seeming to scream to pedestrians: watch out!

This work is inspired by my interaction with flies, and the transience and fragility of this relationship. My encounter with the fly can be seen as an accidental crack, in which the boundary between creature and human is blurred, oscillating between the visible and the invisible. Industrial development, road construction, the commodity economy... these issues seem to strangle the existence of all survivors at the same time, the cruel reality of the problem entwined like a vine with the ecosystem.

I try to use fragile materials such as ceramic and glass to make flies and human body fragments. The fly's head, the combination of human torso and insect abdomen, the transparent wings, and the light pink hair. The size and color of these body fragments are different from both humans and insects, yet they belong to both humans and insects, and their existence is magnified from neglect to being like an archaeological fossil fragment, carrying clues of archives and lived experience. I want to use sculpture, installation and photography to shape a fictional scenario, to touch on the cruelty of reality and the fragility of human communities from a non-human perspective.

Medium:

glass, clay, hair, steel, resin, crayon

Size:

Variable
The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception.
The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception.
The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception.
The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception.
The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception.

Medium: steel plate, UV print

Size: 13x15x0.3cm (each)

I try to narrate in photography and images the paradoxical relationship between the life of creatures and the life of humans. I have bought commodities about flies that are sold in everyday life and are often used in familiar areas such as the home, the garden and the farm, invariably for the purpose of killing flies. The protagonist of the photograph is me, a human dressed as a fly, and I show and use these commodities with my perception and understanding.

Either as a novelty, a pleasure, or a devotee.

I made a chair with four monster feet use black clay.
I made a chair with four monster feet use black clay.

Medium: clay

Size: 25x25x20cm

People broke into the forest, wearing jackets and boots and carrying a backpack of weapons.

They aim clearly, look around, and advance cautiously. Their tracks are left in the damp mud.

Nothing.

The monster with the textured hair, pale toenails and protruding spine was speculated to be hiding deeper in the forest.

Only the children playing in the house knew that it was not a monster and that it was not there.


(MaoMao 毛毛：often used as an affectionate infant name for children in China)


Decayed Teeth comes from artist Zhuo Yao

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Royal College of Art

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