June 2 - July 20, 2025
Opening Reception & Community Art Tour to Garneau School and Bao Restaurant: June 21, 1-3 p.m.
Cui Jinzhe’s exhibition Om ~ Ah ~ Home：Healing Space for Body & Mind, is a poetic journey of finding grounding between the two worlds Jinzhe calls home: Dalian, China, and Edmonton, Alberta. Her work takes the form of three bodies of work, including a painting series, an interactive screen panel installation, and a kinetic mixed media and ceramics sculpture.
Using Chinese ink painting techniques in the Home painting series, Jinzhe depicts human and animal-like beings intermingling within surreal, dreamy landscapes. In each painting, Jinzhe creates a fantastical “home” for each of her chosen subjects, such as Nymph, Seniors, Ocean, Love, Flowing, Farmers, Playground, etc. As significant elements of Jinzhe’s conception of “world”, she offers them a sacred and beguiling space to exist both physically and spiritually.
With titles like Heart Sutra, Enlightenment, Dependent Rising, Cui Jinzhe has created sanctuaries for visitors to her panel installations. Exploring the 2-dimensional pictorial relationships within traditional Chinese screen paintings, Jinzhe expands the space through the addition of physical objects that viewers can interact with to enrichen the contemplative and mindful experience of exploring connection and belonging.
The third work is a spinning ceramic and calligraphic sculpture called Om~ Ah~ Home! The clay figures reference the shamanic culture of Jinzhe’s Manchu heritage while the masks are informed by traditional dance of the Baima people of Tibet. Importantly, this work mirrors the cyclical nature of life, like being anchored through the rhythm and flow of time.
Through this luminary work, Cui Jinzhe seeks to connect us all to her wondrous and evocative cosmos.
-Wendy Peart, Curator
Cui Jinzhe, whose pen name is Qiu Shi, is a painter, poet, and multidisciplinary artist who has been painting, writing and practising music since her childhood. Jinzhe was born and raised in Dalian, China, where she earned a BA (Visual Communication) at School of Arts Design from Dalian University of Foreign Languages and a MA at Dalian Polytechnic University. In 2008, Jinzhe moved to Canada to continue her studies and work as an independent artist in Edmonton. Her work explores the integration between Chinese ink painting, calligraphy writing, and interdisciplinary practice, often within an interactive public context.