In collaboration with Birth Rites
10 January – 28 February 2008
Swiss-Chinese installation artist Ping Qiu ceramic vessels are sensual, sexual, playful, strangely comforting expressions of the human form. During her residency at Chinese Arts Centre Ping has been creating several works varying in size which celebrate the female form and female strength with particular reference to child birth.
In April 2007 Ping spent a month with practicing midwife and leading childbirth expert and founder and director of The Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin. They were brought together by Birth Rites curator Helen Knowles who after seeing Ping’s installation of giant phallic and womb-like ceramic vessels felt their practices would converge over their innate sensuality of the human form and their openness and playfulness with the female body.
Inspired by the time spent talking to Gaskin, something of a cult figure in midwifery, and witnessing life (literally) on The Farm, Ping new works meditate on the beginnings of life and the social, cultural and political implications of the way women give birth.
Swiss-Chinese artist Ping Qiu was born in Wuhan, China. She studied at the National Art Academy Hangzhou (1981-87) and the Hochschule der Kuenste, Berlin (1988-94). Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Goethe Institute, Munich; Neue Aktionsgalerie, Berlin; “arche 2000″, London; Tamar Festival Centre, Hongkong. She participated in the Havana Biennial, Cuba in 2003.
For her open studio Ping will be exhibiting her ceramic works, intricate preparatory drawings and screening footage of her moving performance and installation work.
