BIO

Xinzhu Yan (b. 1997, Chongqing, China) is an artist currently based in Seoul. With a background in animation, painting, and visual storytelling, she is completing a PhD in Fine Art at Hongik University.

Xinzhu's recent paintings focus on the body as a passive, unexpressive form—figures that appear faceless, functionless, and suspended in flattened psychological space. Her characters resist identification: they turn away, dissolve into color fields, or retreat into formless postures. Executed with intuitive urgency, her works often preserve visible layers and reworkings, allowing the act of painting to mirror emotional dissonance and erasure.

Through a pared-down visual language of muted grounds and bruised hues, Xinzhu constructs a stage where bodies neither perform nor reveal, but endure. Her practice reflects on the thresholds between presence and withdrawal, structure and collapse, surface and residue.

CV

Born in 1997 in ChongQing, China

Resides and works in Seoul, Korea

Education:

2017 BFA Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, Animation, CN
2021 BFA Hongik University, Design&Arts&Media Major in Film&Animation, KR
2023 MFA Hongik University, Graduate School, Painting, KR
2023 - Expected   PHD Hongik University, Graduate School, Fine Art, Painting, KR

Group Exhibitions:
2022  <Our Emotions>, WWW SPACE, Seoul, KR
2023  <Masked>, CICA museum, Gimpo, KR
2023  <Where the wild roses grow>, Kristin Hjellegjerdle gallery, Berlin, DE
2023  <Limits>, colorbeat gallery, Seoul, KR
2024  <NOPE HOPE>, Glitch Biennale, Busan, KR
2025 <Weighty stillness, A flowing body>, q_archive, Seoul, KR

Publications:

<Tenant News> 2023.08                                                                                                <ArtMaze Magazine> Issue35 

Press:

Womannews: http://www.womennews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=235312

Newsbrite: http://www.newsbrite.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=171978

문화뉴스: https://www.mhns.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=551548