Rooted in active perception, Grace Qian’s work explores the fragile tension between self and space, capturing moments when the stability of one’s living environment meets an unsettling flux. Through layered compositions and manipulated perspectives, she reveals the quiet dissonances within everyday surroundings, tracing the subtle ways our living spaces reveal–and, just as often, obscure–the sense of self: the histories, hierarchies, and habitual acts that define us. Balancing intimacy and detachment, her paintings evoke the feeling of being a stranger within the very places that shape us, framing these disruptions into profound moments that deepen our understanding of home.
Grace Qian is a Chinese Canadian artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with honors and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2024. She was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2023. Her solo exhibitions include Becoming More at Arts Etobicoke Storefront Gallery, Toronto, Canada, and Brief Encounters at SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, NY. Selected group exhibitions featuring her work include Liminal: Interstices Between and Betwixt at Beaver Hall Gallery, Toronto, Canada, the 2022 Artist Project Art Fair, Toronto, Canada, and Make Yourself at Home at Fragment Gallery, New York, NY.
