YE QIN ZHU

BFA  Cooper Union, 2010

MFA  Yale University, 2020

 

Ye Qin Zhu was born in Taishan, China (1986), to farmers who met in the factories of Shenzhen city. His family immigrated to NYC in 1990. He grew up in a house with a village-style vegetable garden in the cosmopolitan neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. These histories propel him. Their currents—manufacture and gardening, belonging and displacement, anarchy and citizenry, spirit and material—are split modes that fold over, burrowing and resurfacing. Through art-making, Zhu is in conversation with their movements. 

​

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Zhu is an interdisciplinary artist with a wide ranging practice that encompasses painting, public art, and social practice. This past year Zhu has had a NYC solo exhibition at  Harkawik Gallery and an institutional solo at the Andrew Freedman Home in Bronx, NY; was in group shows at Harper’s Gallery, James Fuentes, and Sugar Hill Museum in NYC, Galerie Marguo, Paris, France; designed a billboard at Kingsgate Project Space in London, UK; and designed two large-scale public art installations, one in Strafford, NH called A Universe and the other in Governors Island, New York titled CONSTELLATION. Zhu is a leading member of the Haven Arts Park coalition that spearheaded the New Haven COVID-19 Memorial, working with the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, residents, community and organization leaders to remediate a contaminated land into a healing-garden art-park (recipient of Andrew Mellon Foundation grant, 2022-2023). From 2021-2022, Zhu has worked closely with healthcare workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital to create a permanent tribute art installation in the front atrium of the Yale School of Medicine. Notable awards Zhu have received are Andrew Freedman Home studio residency, Bronx, NY (2021-2022), THAT Co. studio grant in Bushwick, New York (2022), Tsai CITY (Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale) Innovation Fellow (2020-2022), and Critical Practice Research Grant at Yale New Haven, CT (2020). Zhu has been the subject of interviews for publications in the New York Times, Curator Guide, and Arts Council of Greater New Haven.