At the Future Art & Design Award 2025 Winter Season, interdisciplinary artist Qionglu Shi (JingYu) achieved remarkable international recognition across multiple categories. Her works received: Gold Prize — Mixed Media Painting for Archive of a Post-Human Dawn; Gold Prize — Fiber Art for Profusion of Brocade; Silver Prize — Public Art and Installation Art for Specimens of Time. Together, these accolades highlight a practice that moves fluidly between material experimentation, spatial thinking, and critical reflection on technology and temporality.
Among the awarded works, Archive of a Post-Human Dawn stands out as a conceptually rigorous exploration of how painting might evolve within a post-human condition. Drawing from her experience living in the UK and observing the coexistence of historical architecture and digital infrastructures, Shi constructs a speculative visual archaeology—one where memory, matter, and data begin to merge.
In the following interview, the artist reflects on technological materiality, temporal layering, and the evolving agency of matter in contemporary art.
Interview with JingYu
Q: What initially inspired this project? Was there a particular idea, moment, or question that sparked its creation?
JingYu:
The initial inspiration for The Post-Human Dawn Archive emerged from a long-term reflection on how painting can continue to exist and generate meaning within a post-contemporary and post-human context. While studying and living in the UK, I was deeply influenced by the coexistence of historical architecture and advanced digital infrastructures in everyday urban life. This constant layering of the past and the future prompted me to question how memory, materiality, and visual systems are being reshaped by technology.
Rather than starting from a single moment, the project grew out of an ongoing question: What happens to human-centered visual order when it is gradually absorbed into data, algorithms, and technological systems? I became interested in imagining a form of “future archaeology,” where today’s cities might be viewed as digital relics—preserved, transformed, and reinterpreted through transparent and synthetic materials.
This led me to think of history not as something that disappears, but as something that mutates. The idea of living past and living future became central to the project: a state where Renaissance humanist principles—such as proportion, rationality, and anthropocentrism—are folded into contemporary systems of computation and information. The works attempt to visualize this temporal overlap, where history becomes raw material for future generations rather than a closed chapter.
Q: What was the most exciting or most challenging aspect of bringing this work to life?
JingYu:
One of the most exciting aspects of realizing this project was discovering how materials could actively participate in the conceptual structure of the work, rather than merely serving as carriers of imagery. Working with transparent acrylic, resin, metal, and digital stickers allowed me to extend painting into space and treat it as a spatial, time-based process. The moment when resin solidifies, for example, became both a physical fixation of time and a metaphor for frozen yet evolving states of civilization.
At the same time, this process was also highly challenging. Technically, combining heterogeneous materials—such as metal dust, glass particles, steel structures, and digital symbols—required continuous experimentation and risk-taking. Conceptually, the greater challenge was maintaining tension between the seductive, decorative surface of the works and their underlying critical inquiry into technological systems.
I was particularly attentive to how symbols like barcodes and QR codes, once associated with efficiency and order, have become forms of visual noise through overproduction. Presenting the works in a fragmented, installation-based manner mirrored our contemporary cognitive condition, where perception is constantly interrupted and reorganized.
Rather than romanticizing technology, I was concerned with how material logic and data logic increasingly infiltrate one another—how concrete and steel begin to carry information, and how matter itself acquires a new form of agency. In navigating these challenges, the project ultimately became a poetic experiment in redefining existence at a moment when the boundary between human and machine is becoming increasingly ambiguous.
Q: How was your experience taking part in the Future Art & Design Award UK?
JingYu:
Participating in the UK Future Art & Design Award (FADA UK) was a truly valuable and inspiring experience for me. As an international online award initiated and operated by a professional team in the UK, FADA UK stands out for its high level of professionalism, fairness in evaluation, and strong international perspective. It offered my work the opportunity to be viewed and considered within a broader, cross-cultural context.
As a contemporary Chinese artist who once studied and lived in the UK, my practice often reflects on the relationship between personal experience, local realities, and global narratives. What I found especially meaningful about FADA UK is its inclusive scope, bringing together diverse creative fields such as art, architecture, design, and public practices. This multidisciplinary framework reinforced my understanding that contemporary creation today is not confined by medium or geography, but shaped through ongoing international dialogue and exchange.
The jury, composed of leading international professionals from various disciplines, engaged with the work from multiple perspectives. This made the experience not only about recognition, but also about reflection—allowing me to better understand how my work communicates within a wider professional and cultural landscape.
I am deeply grateful for this recognition. It has given me encouragement to continue developing my artistic language, while also reminding me of the importance of humility and openness when engaging with different cultural contexts and creative communities. This experience has further motivated me to pursue a practice that remains thoughtful, responsive, and capable of fostering sincere cross-cultural dialogue.
Follow the Artist
Website: https://artjingyu.com/
Instagram: art.jingyu
Red Note: sisriri
1982 Born inShanghai
2000-2001 Studies Art & Design Foundation Diploma at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
2001-2004 Studies Textile Design BA (Hons) at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design
2017-2018 Studies MBA in Art ,Culture and Fashion Management at EAC (Ecole D’art et de Culture)
Jingyu’s interdisciplinary background injects a distinct experimental quality into her
practice. In 2024, Jingyu garnered international attention as the recipient of the
"Emerging Artist" Award at the 19th Venice Laguna International Art Prize. Her
work is held in the collections of several prominent international institutions and
private collectors.
Jingyu's artistic inquiry confronts the societal essence emerging in a post-human
trajectory. Utilizing installation, collage, and wall sculptures, she employs
unconventional materials such as epoxy resin, acrylic, insect specimens, and fashion
textiles. Through techniques of multi-layered superposition, printing, and material
fabrication, she deliberately blurs the physical boundaries between the living and non-
living. Her work constitutes not only a multi-sensory experiment in visual strata but
also a philosophical challenge to traditional anthropocentrism. Within digitally
intelligent and virtually constructed spatial landscapes, she weaves contemporary
geopolitical structures—from modern communication networks to urban
transportation—into intricate mappings of fragmented existence in contemporary
society. By mastering diverse media and re-contextualizing biological specimens,
Jingyu juxtaposes the microscopic individual with the macroscopic universe,
chronicling humanity's transitional state within digital civilization.
Lives and Works in Shanghai.
Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions
2025 A New Identity In Post-Globalism, SumSum Connects, ShangHai
IDEAL CITY– JingYu Solo exhibition, MADEINART Gallery, Milano
City Echoes, Hu Wensui Art institution, Shanghai
Ode to Joy: Contemporary Female Artists Group Exhibition, DaHu Art Space, Shanghai 2024
CITTA IDEALE – JingYu Solo exhibition, Arsenale Tesa 98, Venezia
Urban Echoes, SumSum Connects, Shanghai
The Garden of Borges, Sunke Villa, Shanghai
ChaYanGuanSe (察颜观色) ,DUOMEI Art Center
Line Planning, Hong Museum, Shanghai
2023 Solo Exhibition Flare - Metro Paramita, Young Art Museum, Shanghai
Biotope Shanghai Young Art Fair, World Trade Mall Exhibition Hall, Shanghai
2022 Abstract Rhythm, Xu Gallery, Shanghai
Abstract New Shanghai, Young Art Museum, Shanghai
2021 The 11th Shanghai Art Exhibition, China Art Museum, Shanghai
Fa Gu Se Qik Ne Ye, Shanghai Luxuriant, Shanghai
2020 SHYAF Horizon, Shanghai Expo, Shanghai
Limitless, Chun Art Museum, Shanghai
The Shanghai Blue, Indigo Hotel, Shanghai
Letter Alive, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai
New World of Art, Vermilion Art, Sydney
2019 Blue Realm, City Walk Sates Centre, Shanghai
Hurun Art Foundation Exhibition, M50 Hurun Art Space, Shanghai
Ode To Joy, Jinart Space, Shanghai
2018 Indescribable, Poy Art Center, Shanghai
Paint Past One Another, Shanghai Gallery, Shanghai
2017 Shanghai Young Art Fair, Shanghai Expo, Shanghai
