Qiu Zhijie

Qiu Zhijie (邱志杰; born 1969) is a contemporary Chinese artist who works primarily in video and photography. Overall, Qiu Zhijie's work suggests the struggle between the forces of destiny and self-assertion. Other common themes are social fragmentation and transience.

Zhijie was born in 1969 in Fujian province. In 1992, he graduated from the printmaking department at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou. He now lives and works in Beijing.

The artist's break-through exhibition was in 1992 with China's New Art, Post-1989 at the Hanart Gallery and Hong Kong Arts Centre. By 1999, his work began receiving overseas interest with his inclusion in Revolutionary Capitals: Beijing-London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. In 2007 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the New York gallery Chambers Fine Art.

In 2005, his work was exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Between Past And Future: New Photography And Video From China, including Tattoo 1, which explores Qiu Zhijie's assertion that in our media-saturated age, "signs and codes have overpowered actual human beings, and our bodies have become merely their vehicles." The character bu — meaning "no" — is written across the artist's body and on the wall behind him, creating the illusion that it floats free of the body.