Cui Xiuwen

The photographic world of Cui Xiuwen is filled with women. They are seen in secretly shot videos nervously fidgeting with their lipstick on the subway, or fixing each other’s hair as they chat in a nightclub bathroom (viewers later find out that the women in the club are actually prostitutes arranging dates). In her photographic series “Angel”, a schoolgirl dwarfs the Forbidden City, while a pregnant woman lies before a contemporary building site and an army of girls moves like a phalanx of sleepwalkers. There’s a similar dreamlike quality to her series “Existential Emptiness”, in which she digitally inserts herself and a doll-like alter ego into spare monochromatic landscapes inspired by Chinese ink painting.