Through illustration-based works, artist Qintong Yu reflects an ongoing interest in the subtle forces that shape identity across generations. She tends to situate her viewer in a dreamscape, or more precisely, a locus of emotional processing which deals obliquely with the relationships between body, memory, and inherited cultural experience. Compositions often weave together figures, organic forms, and symbolic motifs to create contemplative visual environments where personal narratives are encountered within the context of collective histories.
‘Fragments and Reconstructions’ is a multi-referential body of work composed of three illustrations rendered in a high-contrast palette of deep charcoal, teal, and orange. With their cherubic figurations and soft contours, Yu’s paintings are decidedly more populist than the pallid cubism of, say, a Picasso but the works sit comfortably within the formal conventions of post-Cubism, perhaps somewhere closer to a Léger. Their tactile, grain-heavy texture adds a grounded, organic feel to an otherwise ethereal exploration of the subconscious.
Yu inherits too, the Modernist preoccupation with the subjective experience to communicate the universality of a fragmented, perpetually modifying self. The work Disjointed Perception (2025) for example, explores the dissonance between our internal reality and external expectations. Sharp geometric shards contain isolated sensory features such as a performing smile, an observing eye, and a listening ear but the cupped face bears an expression of fatigue, which the artist describes as the “quiet exhaustion of processing a world that demands us to constantly fracture our attention.”
By contrast, the immediate impression of Layers of Self (2025) is one of placidity and nurture. Bodies are foetally coiled, or else cossetted in gentle hands, as if to say; “come now, rest a while.” Encased within and emerging from a vibrant dimpled amoeba, their interlocking limbs and overlapping silhouettes appear to suggest that our identity is not a single entity, but a fluid, nested sequence of experiences. As one is laid to rest, another sets foot in the conscious realm.
In its dealings with the subconscious and, more specifically, a kind of Freudian palimpsest self, Splintered Remains (2025) faithfully, yet in aesthetic terms, implicitly summons the language of Surrealism. The canvas is densely layered with shattered elements; winding botanical motifs, burning incense and overlapping faces representing a composite physiognomy of curiosity, scorn and resignation. Yu leans on the transient symbology of incense with its implications of cross-realm communication to evoke a sense of mourning and reverence for our past iterations; individually, generationally and culturally.
Written by Millen Brown-Evans
