Qiu Zhijie

“ In 2010, Hans Ulrich Obrist asked me to paint “Map of the 21 Century” for  he Digital Life Design conference in Munich. 

Actually, it wasn’t the first time that I made a map. During such exhibitions as “Ataraxic of Zhuangzi” and “Breaking the Ice”, I put maps near the trance to show the positions of my works and their interconnections. Even before  hat, when I wandered around Tibet and Xinjiang in the beginning of 90’s, when I was the curator of the “Long March” project, I was already fascinated with collecting and creating maps. I have never gotten lost, because there is always a map in my head. At the end of 2011, I was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in the Guggenheim museum.”

I was supposed to give out photographs of my works for a catalog; every contender had only six pages to do that. There was no way that I could introduce myself on merely six pages. Six pages are not even enough to introduce such slightly complicated work as “Railway from Lhasa to Katmandu” (the work itself is connected to the concept of a map; maps were also included in the body of it).” 

It was completely out of the question for such an enormous project as the Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge. That’s why I decided to draw maps. That’s how a greedy person can put unlimited information within a limited amount of space. This set of maps described all my work in total. The “Map of the 21 Century” is the result of my research on futurology and eschatology. The “Map of Utopia” is a set of political ideologies. The “Map of Total Art” describes the framework of my work in general, especially my work as a teacher. The “Map of Reactivation” is a mind map of the whole curatorial work on the Shanghai Biennale. Finally, the “Map of the Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge” thoroughly outlines a large-scale art project that took most of my capacities in the last few years.

In 2012, I held the post of curator of the Shanghai Biennale. I think that a curator is a person who sets up relations, just like a cartographer. I graduated from the printmaking department of the Zhejiang Academy of Art; therefore, among curators, I’m probably the best at drawing. I don’t have to write a long article as a curatorial statement. Instead, I can make some maps complimented with comments. So, in 2012, I made twelve artistic maps. After that, there were more.

Mapping has provided me with a method to bring together research, writing, imagination and action. I spent many years experimenting with creation, writing, curating, education; people often ask me the question of my identity.

“Who are you after all?” “I’m in-between”, I used to answer cunningly.

Now I say, “I am a cartographer”.

Now, my mapping work has developed into the “Mapping the World Project”; after all, every map embodies the whole world.