Artist · Scholar · Curator
Jiushuang Chen
Art and scholarship at the meeting point of Chinese visual culture and Christian faith.
His work attends to faith, suffering, beauty, neighborliness, and the social imagination in modern and contemporary Chinese experience.
Recurring concerns
Images as sites of memory, vulnerability, and encounter.
Neighbors鄰舍
Painted faces shaped by proximity, opacity, and the ethical demand of the other.
View series
Speak in Tongues
Portraiture, fractured language, and the passage between speech, silence, and belief.
View series
Dust
Photography and moving-image works on mortality, memory, and the fragile possibility of renewal.
View seriesPainting as witness, encounter, and a form of public reflection.
Words & Tongues
Faith and language in a solo exhibition at Enjoy Museum of Art in Beijing’s 798 Art Zone.
View exhibition 2022 · HangzhouEcce Homo
The wounded human figure enters into dialogue with suffering, dignity, and hope.
View exhibition 2018 · OxfordA Time for Dust
Memory, mortality, and the possibility of renewal at St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford.
View exhibitionExhibitions and gatherings as spaces of inquiry and shared attention.
Contextualizing Theology and Modern Visual Art
International conference
Public Faith and Social Imagination
Christian Poster Art in China, 1920s–1940s
No One Is an Island
Art Exhibition for Autistic Children
Either/Or
The Second Exhibition of Ten Artists
Secret Garden
Christian Art Exhibition
To look closely is to receive the other as neighbor.
Rooted in Christian faith and shaped by Chinese visual culture, Chen’s practice treats painting as a form of attention to the human person.
Rather than illustrating doctrine, the work stays with vulnerability, lament, compassion, and hope. It asks how an image might bear witness to suffering without turning suffering into spectacle—and how beauty might open a space for encounter and renewal.
Christianity in modern and contemporary Chinese art.
Broadening Art Criticism’s Horizons: A Critical Evaluation of Zha Changping’s World Relational Aesthetics
Journal of Chinese Theology · Brill ↗Chewing Pain to Mend the World
ChinaSource ↗Metaphors and Controversy: The Cross in Modern Chinese Art
Modern Chinese Theologies III · Fortress Press ↗Serving Life Through Art
ChinaSource ↗Reviews, conversations, and lectures beyond the studio.
An artist and historian working across the studio, archive, and classroom.
Chen brings painting, theological reflection, and visual-cultural inquiry into sustained conversation.
Jiushuang Chen is an artist and art historian whose work examines Christianity in modern and contemporary Chinese art, addressing faith, suffering, beauty, neighborliness, and social imagination.
He holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from Tsinghua University and an MA in Painting from the China Academy of Art, where he later taught. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC). His visiting research appointments have included St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford; the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong; Fuller Theological Seminary; and Princeton Theological Seminary.
Chen has presented solo exhibitions in Oxford, Beijing, and Hangzhou, and his work has appeared at the National Art Museum of China, EXPO CHICAGO, and the LA Art Show. Brill and Fortress Press have published his scholarship.
Education
PhD · Tsinghua University
MA · China Academy of Art
Practice
Painting · Art History
Visual Theology · Curating
Contact
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conversation.
Exhibitions · Research · Lectures · Collaborations
contact@jiushuangchen.com