XIAO Hanqiu & Tant Yunshu ZHONG
Paris Internationale 2025
Booth -1.18
Preview: 21 October 2025, 10am - 8pm
Public entry: 22-26 October 2025

XIAO Hanqiu's work explores the subtle relationship between memory, emotion, and the materiality of objects through poetic and surreal imagery. She combines seemingly opposing elements, such as animals, minerals, the human body, and man-made objects in her paintings to visualise metaphoric poetries. The interaction between different materials in her work display a unique artistic tension, proposing distinct essence of the objects within. Her creative process usually starts out with a boundless imagination, is completed through deep interaction with the depicted objects and finally lets the work attains its own identity.

Tant Yunshu ZHONG’s practice examines the relational logic between objects and materials. Drawing from industrial samples and functional goods, she reconfigures them into sculptural assemblages that unsettle conventional notions of use and form. Her works reveal the contradictions embedded in everyday materials, balancing fragility with strength and precision with improvisation. They invite viewers to perceive objects as active participants in an unfolding process rather than fixed entities.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

XIAO Hanqiu (b.1986 in Beijing, China) is a painter and a poet based in Beijing, China. Xiao’s paintings on canvas juxtapose objects in situations that conjure the ethereal magic and intensity of being. Her paintings operate like her poems—linear narrative is rejected in favour of open questions that reflect on the complexity, ineffability, and inconstancy of experience. Xiao received her MA Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2011, and BA Fine Art from Leeds University in 2008.

Her solo and duo exhibitions include: Do Angels Need Haircuts, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2024); Sci-Fi Doomsday/Lost in Wonderland, Shekou Gallery (Shenzhen, 2023); Love Stories and Horror Stories, Lyles and King (New York, 2022); Honey, Bee, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2021); LISTE, dual solo booth, presented by Tabula Rasa Gallery (Basel, 2021); There May Be No Pearls in This Shell, Leo Gallery (Shanghai, 2020); Skating Through the Gallery With Tricksy Snakes, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2018); That’s Quite Something, Canton Gallery (Guangzhou, 2018); Self-portrait, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2016).  Selected group exhibitions include: ORBITAL, Nova Contemporary (Bangkok, 2024); NADA Miami, presented by Tabula Rasa Gallery (Miami, 2023); Contemporary Myths and Artifacts, Stads Gasverk (Stockholm, 2023); Minor Attractions × Cornershop (London, 2023); Magic Square: Art and Literature in Mirror Image, Beijing Biennial (Beijing, 2023); Becoming Creature, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); Tabula Rasa Vista, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2020). She has published four poem collections: Losing Everything is Beautiful (2022), A dream come true The worst idea ever (2019), Three Minutes to Midnight Flower Thief (2018), and Four Hearts (2015).

Tant Yunshu ZHONG (b.1990, Wuhan, China) lives and works in Shanghai, China. Zhong’s artistic practice focuses on the moments within everyday flow that can be used for resistance and questioning. These frozen moments may be simple, elegant, slightly comedic, or even absurd. There is no precise boundary in her assemblages; they are dispersed yet mutually constrained. She excels at linking, arranging, combining, and constructing multiple associations between different objects and words. She skillfully places the contradictions hidden within organic life. The state of her works seems to want to return to some fundamental rules and rhythms while faintly attempting to break them.  
Her recent solo exhibitions include: Unbelievably Soft Process，Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing,2025); Where Does a Wanderer Seek Rest at Night?, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2023); Having a good night’s sleep, LISTE Basel (Basel, 2023); A Kitchen Blessing, LINSEED (Shanghai, 2022); The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2020); The Endless Spring, J: Gallery (Shanghai, 2016); Tissue and Tissue Paper, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2016); Lead, Lead, Lead, Surplus Space (Wuhan, 2016).  Recent group exhibitions include The Cabinet of Wonder, X Museum (Shanghai, 2025); Awakening, XZ SPACE (Beijing, 2025); Improvisation, Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing, 2024); The Theater of Mimicry, Hanart TZ Gallery (Hong Kong, 2024); Drawer inside the Bar Lines, Power Station of Art, Emerging Curators Project (Shanghai, 2024); .....,Thomas Erben Gallery (New York, 2024); Righteous Market, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2024); Expeditionary Botanics, Longmarch Independent Space (Beijing, 2024);  Contemporary Myths and Artifacts (Stockholm, 2023); Tabula Rasa: Unveiled, No.9 Cork Street (London, 2023), among others.  Tant Yunshu Zhong's works were acquired by MACA Art Center in Beijing, China and by Surplus Space in Wuhan, China.