Artist Statement
Ziqi Chen (b. 2001) is a London-based artist exploring the intersection of dreams, liminality and urban spcae. Drawing from years of dream journaling, Chen’s work explores liminality—both as a psychological state and a spatial condition. Informed by cosmology, existential curiosity, and the nature of dreams, their paintings act as visual portals into hidden or alternate realities, engaging with speculative and supernatural traditions. The spaces they depict—often urban, nocturnal, and suspended in ambiguous temporality—evoke a collective recognition tinged with unease. This approach bridges the subconscious and the external world, serving as a metaphor for the passage between states of being. Chenacts as both an observer and conduit, channelling an energy or presence that transcends individual experience.
Incorporating AI-generated imagery as reference material, Chen integrates traditional painting techniques with new media. Informed by the procedural generation, and Lacan’s concept of dreams as a structured language, their work delves into the unconscious mind as a pool of data, fabricating meaning and new configuration of reality from symbolic associations, where the self is both fragmented and perpetually seeking. This fusion constructs a mystical interpretation of the unconscious mind, navigating displacement in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, internet culture, and urbanisation. Chen engages with contemporary concerns surrounding virtuality, power dynamics in the digital age, and the instability of self and space, questioning the shifting boundaries between the virtual and the real.