Ningyue Qian (钱宁越) lives and works in London, graduated with first class honours in sculpture from Shanghai University College of Fine Arts as an undergraduate, and is currently studying MA sculpture 23-24 at the Royal College of Art.
"Cooking is always with me, which gives me an unfamiliar sense of relief."
As a Chinese expatriate living in London, Ningyue's feelings of difference brought about by geographic shuttling have reshaped her fundamental understanding of the concepts of body, identity and nation.
With regard to the initial questions raised by the geographical location of the body, Ningyue turns her attention to the cooking culture and the absorption process of oesophageal digestion in her hometown of Ningbo, China. The body serves as the driving force, the affects of appeasement are kneaded and baked into the dough. The affects of the unconscious habitus gradually expand, calcify, fragment and flow at will, and Ningyue uses dough as a medium to provoke reflection on the body's suspension in power relations.
The affective ruins produced by the techno-myth of modernity and the mobility of groups of people between different fields are implicit in Ningyue's work and materials. Using cooking as a means and dough as a medium, she questions the assumptions that condition the concepts of identity and belonging to their own obscurity, revealing the spatial places that are often deliberately divided and easily dispossessed between representation and reality. This helps us to truly understand the promise of the nation and the changes in society.
Ningyue creates works inspired by cooking (cultural cooking), using everyday kitchen materials such as dough and sugar to connect and continually improve the ability to extend and cover these seemingly fragile and taken-for-granted materials in a contemporary or live culinary way. Most of Ningyue's works are reworked during each installation to create an imagined community that fulfils expectations.
Ningyue received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the College of Fine Arts, Shanghai University, China in 2023, graduating first in the Sculpture Department, and was the only winner of the Zeng Zhushao Scholarship from Shanghai University in the same year.She was awarded two consecutive national scholarships from the People's Republic of China from 2019 to 2022, and was awarded the Shanghai University Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2022.
Artist Anish Kapoor saw Ningyue's Cooking series at the Royal College of Arts Graduation Exhibition in June 2024, and expressed in person his praise and recognition of Ningyue's creativity in the extension of her work with the material of dough, and looked forward to her further development and future. Her work was included in the Art in the docks exhibition (2024), supported and sponsored by Art In The Docks and Notting Hill Genesis, and described by the Mayor of Newham, London, as a highly creative and surprising sculpture；The future of belonging (2024), supported and sponsored by Speiro projects; Sixthe senses (2024) at Standpoint Gallery residency programme；Zeng Zhushao Scholarship Exhibition (2023) sponsored and nominated by China Sculpture Society, Datong Municipal People's Government；Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts Outstanding Works Exhibition (2023) Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts.