Artist

Dai Ying (born in 1983 in Sichuan, China), currently based in New York and Beijing, is a cross-media artist living and working between Chinese and Western cultures. From the age of five, she received systematic training in traditional Chinese calligraphy and ink painting, gradually developing a unique artistic language that integrates Eastern spirituality with contemporary expression.

Dai Ying’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in reflections on female power and geopolitical identity. Through layering of media, hybridization of materials, and symbolic structures, she explores the hidden connections between contemporary social frameworks and the cosmic logic of life. She has proposed the conceptual system of the “Geo-Maternal Matrix,” advocating that women’s art should go beyond the pursuit of basic rights toward a constructive spiritual genesis that achieves a higher dimension and broader scope of feminist power. In her work, geo-maternalism is not merely a symbol but also a methodology—characterized by inclusiveness, nurturing, and cyclical patterns—which she transforms into a new visual order.

Through spiral structures, multi-layered dyeing and painting, imagery of bloodlines, and botanical matrices, Dai Ying constructs a visual logic centered on the flow of energy, the cycles of life, and the evolution of culture.

Personal Background and Shifts in Perspective

Dai Ying’s father rose from being a construction worker during the early years of China’s Reform and Opening-Up to becoming a builder and real estate developer. He hoped that she would one day inherit the family’s business territory and its tradition of art collecting. From an early age, Dai Ying received rigorous training in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, endowing her with both the inner temperament and technical mastery of this art form. Her childhood was also closely tied to sports: at the age of five and a half, she began training in table tennis, eventually becoming an accomplished athlete. During her teenage years, she joined the Chinese National Youth Table Tennis Team and attained the professional status of a National First-Class Athlete in China.

Her father’s journey instilled in Dai Ying an outlook that did not confine herself strictly within the self-referential framework of female identity. Instead, her vision gradually expanded to include a concern for marginalized groups in society and the struggles of ordinary people. This shift—from “departing the self” toward “humanistic care”—reflects not only the broadening of her artistic perspective but also embodies the social and humanitarian consciousness that defines her as a contemporary artist. Moving beyond personal experience and gendered viewpoints, she has increasingly turned her focus toward broader existential spaces and social groups—a journey from the “individual self” to a “collective self.”

In 2009, she entered the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University for professional training, where she first systematically encountered contemporary art. She was deeply inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s spirit of venturing alone to the United States to pursue her artistic dreams. In 2011, Dai Ying resolutely set off for Manhattan, New York, to embark on her artistic journey and to realize her ambitions as an artist. Drawing upon her profound mastery of traditional Chinese materials and her spontaneous mode of expression, she freely developed a mixed-media creative system that integrates Rice paper, mineral pigments, and acrylics, while also beginning to explore and master the medium of oil painting.

In 2017, due to her father’s severe illness and subsequent passing, Dai Ying began traveling frequently between Beijing and New York. During this period, she rented a studio in Beijing and commenced her artistic practice there.

Thematic Expansion and Spiritual Dimensions

Beginning with an early focus on the contemplation of her own identity, Dai Ying’s art has gradually evolved toward an exploration of macro-level structures and spiritual mechanisms. She has constructed a “multi-temporal narrative field” that traverses cultural contexts, integrating ancestral memories with the technological modernity of today.

A recurring motif in her works is the counterclockwise spiral—a maternal archetype widely present in prehistoric goddess worship, in the “gate of the otherworld” of Celtic mythology, in the philosophical system of Indian Tantra, and in the natural world’s maternal symbols. It signifies the soul’s return to the earth’s womb and the passage into cycles of reincarnation and rebirth. The spiral is not merely a visual element, but also a spiritual path.

She believes that “hormonal conditioning” is a hidden biological metaphor underpinning contemporary patriarchal structures, while the inclusiveness and regenerative wisdom inherent in women hold the potential to reshape the flows of social energy on a spiritual level. This idea is not merely an abstract ideal but is concretely embodied in her precise control of techniques such as multi-layer dyeing on Chinese Rice paper, the configuration of installations, and the use of color. For example, spiral structures, the palette of ochre red, iron black, and polychromatic combinations are all intended to evoke a resonance between the body and the earth.

Media Language and Forms of Expression

Dai Ying works primarily with Chinese Rice paper and oil painting as her core media. Her works on Rice paper and silk demonstrate her exceptional mastery over materials, skillfully integrating Eastern materials such as raw Rice paper, silk, and ink with Western vocabularies like acrylics, mineral pigments applied in more than twenty layers of accumulated dyeing and painting, and multimedia installations. This results in complex, layered visual structures. She adeptly harnesses the element of chance during the seepage of pigments, navigating the space between control and unpredictability to capture the dynamic fluctuations of subconscious emotions.

Dai Ying’s oil paintings reveal her extraordinary vitality and powerful drive for expression. For her, the colors of oil paint are the very soul of free artistic articulation. The physical movements involved in creating her oil paintings become a state of flowing meditation, through which she paints her inner sensations—a cry for freedom and a connection to the cosmic vitality of life. The dynamic energy inherent in her paintings is deeply rooted in her memories of rigorous training as a professional athlete during her youth. Gestures such as spinning, dragging, and dabbing reflect her formidable command over the pictorial surface. Her body becomes a bridge, her spirit a flame, together igniting light and color on the canvas.

The spiral textures in Dai Ying’s works are not merely decorative motifs but serve as symbolic language, embodying the maternal logic of the cosmos. Her installation and performance works often begin with a sense of “ritual,” using elements such as earth, water, and textiles in their spatial arrangements and activations to evoke bodily memories and the collective unconscious in viewers.

In her color system, she draws inspiration from ritualistic palettes found in various ancient cultures: ochre red symbolizes the womb’s lifeblood and primal vitality; deep green signifies the fertility and protection of the earth; iron black conveys the forces of depth, gestation, and creation.