I have always tried to understand our existence—this life and our relationship to one another. My lifelong curiosity, which first led me to journalism, now fuels my passion for art. Both disciplines are for me exploratory lenses that allow me to look more deeply into what lies beneath the surface of things. The tension between the seen and unseen is the common thread running through my work. I seek to give an image to the unnamable and a voice to the unspeakable. Initially a writer, I value the ancient power of storytelling. Viewing myself as both a chronicler and a participant of our time, I work to preserve a fragment of a larger narrative while providing a unique perspective on the complexity of our human experience. My work focuses on time, memory, and identity while searching to understand not only who we have been but who we can be.

Elaine Qiu is a multidisciplinary artist works in painting, printmaking, installation, and video. Hovering between abstraction and representation, her work explores the liminal spaces between reality and fiction, past and present, and physical and psychological, and tells stories about memory, time, and change. In her work, Qiu offers a meditation between life’s seen and unseen, draws attention to the tension and flow between the personal and the public.

Qiu holds an MFA from University of Maryland, and a BFA from George Mason University.