Shin Haus is proud to present Qin Shen’s newest exhibition, Like Birds, Toward Their Mountain. The show
embodies Qin’s relationship to their body, healing, and the Buddhist philosophy that guides her life and
practice. Her first solo show since graduating with her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, Qin explores the
relationship between body and landscape. For Qin, these works are a way to mourn the impermanence of
the body, and how it changes over time. Having managed skin disorders such as dermatitis as well as
anxiety driven skin picking and hair pulling, these works provide her with a method of marking and
mapping her body as it is in the present.

Qin Shen (b. 2001) is a Brooklyn-based artist from Changshu, China. Primarily working in painting, her
practice also extends into mixed media printmaking, sculpture, and drawing. Her work explores memory,
bodily sensation, and the shifting relationship between past and present, often focusing on ephemeral
experiences and the traces they leave within the body, objects, and places. She received her MFA in Fine
Arts and BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Shen has presented a solo exhibition
at :iidrr Gallery and exhibited at venues including the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and
Sciences, Helm Contemporary, and FLOHAUS Gallery. Her work has been featured in New American
Paintings, ArtEchive, Bold Journey, Atopia Art Magazine, and Canvas Rebel.

Artist Statement:

My practice centers on painting and extends into mixed-media printmaking and sculpture. I collect
fragmented and fleeting presences and archive them within my work. These may be temporary marks on
the body, shifting shadows, traces left on objects, fragments of memory, or scenes that appear briefly and
then disappear.

Influenced by Buddhist thought and practices of inward observation, I approach painting as a way of
looking inward. I am interested in emotions that cannot be fully recognized in the moment they occur. They
often remain partial and suspended between the body and memory. With time, they begin to unfold and
take on a fuller emotional form. Through painting, I return to these fragments and observe how they
continue to change within me.

My paintings often bring together images from different times and spaces: rural landscapes from my
childhood in China, urban scenes from New York, interrupted dreams, travel memories, and close
observations of my own body. Past and present coexist, creating a shifting space in which memory is
continuously being rewritten through the present self.

Within this process, my position changes from that of the person who originally lived an experience to that
of an observer or reader of it. Painting creates a distance through which I can contemplate my own
experiences, sensations, and attachments. The act of making becomes a form of inward observation.

Touch and mark-making are central to this process. I am drawn to temporary bodily marks, worn surfaces,
collected materials, and shadows that move across a surface. At times, I trace these shadows directly into a
painting, using the immediate physical world as an anchor while moving through memory.

I think of my work as an evolving archive of sensation. Memories erode, expand, disappear, and reappear
through color, material, and touch. What begins as a fleeting fragment may, through time and
contemplation, slowly reveal the emotional presence that was not yet visible when it first occurred.