Qi Zhuo

Qi Zhuo was born in 1985 in Fuxin, Liaoning, China, and now lives and works between Paris, France, and Jingdezhen, China. In 2006, he moved to France and has since dedicated himself to ceramic creation and research. He graduated with honours from Le Mans School of Art and Design (DNSEP diploma), then completed the KAOLIN postgraduate program at ENSA Limoges in France and the Geneva University of Art and Design in Switzerland. In 2020, he was invited for a residency at the Fondation Martell in Cognac, where the glass‑blowing workshop enabled him to develop a distinctive technique combining blown glass with antique‑style sculpture.

Qi Zhuo’s practice is rooted in the experience of cultural and linguistic displacement. Working primarily with ceramics, glass, metal, and paper, he explores the history and traditions embedded in materials—transforming, juxtaposing, and reconfiguring them rather than erasing their origins. Drawing on what he calls the “semantic and linguistic miracles” generated by cultural otherness, he confronts tradition with humour and ceramic experimentation. Porcelain becomes both medium and subject of an unusual “cuisine”: foreign bodies immersed in incongruous, sometimes hostile but always playful environments. Reflecting on his own position as “the other” in a foreign country, he examines his own culture from an outside perspective, turning the misunderstandings produced by cultural collision into a mode of communication. His approach is poetic and subversive, aiming not for resolution but for the creation of new questions—allowing incompleteness and fragility to become vessels of beauty and meaning.

The artist regularly returns to Jingdezhen, where he finds raw materials in the mountains of waste generated by the porcelain industry—discarded fragments steeped in history, which he reclaims and restores. Developing a technique that merges Chinese and French ceramic traditions, he uses porcelain in a radical, performative manner, disrupting conventional forms and breaking objects away from their habitual functions.

The multicultural practice culminates in his Bubble Game series (begun 2020), in which coloured blown‑glass bubbles attach to fractured ancient‑style Buddhist stone torsos like seals or protective cushions. The alchemy between millennia‑old sculptural forms and delicate contemporary glass creates a strangely beautiful paradox: fragility and colour enhance rather than diminish the power of the ancient forms, while the act of filling missing parts with glass evokes cycles of repair, healing and Buddhist reincarnation.

Qi has held more than 40 solo and group exhibitions over the years, including Méditation, Centre Céramique Contemporaine, La Borne, France (2018), and recent group exhibition at Maison Guerlain, Paris; Musée le Carroi, Chinon; National Museum Adrien Dubouché, Limoges; Musée de Salagon, Mane. He has also participated in over 10 artist residency programs.

The French May Arts Festival Associated Project New Voices in Paris Now: Between Memory and Matter at Alisan Atelier, Hong Kong in 2026 is the gallery's first time to work with the artist.