Born in Beijing in 1979 where she studied architecture, performance, and literature, Jia currently lives and works in Berlin. Jia’s work often reinterprets traditional Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting. The tension between the artist’s conceptual enquiry and its formal aspect may be read as a metaphor for self-imposed disjunction between the appeal of a prevailing vision of the world and the falseness of the ideas that inspire it. As such, the works visually gratifying outward appearance proves an alluring agent for addressing the harsh reality the work belies.
Jia has exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale, 2002; Galerie Gordon Pym et Fils, Paris, 2007; Miauhaus, Los Angeles, 2009; collateral event, the Berlin Biennale, 2012; Heldart, Berlin, 2013; Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2014; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, 2014, and is presenting a solo exhibition at the ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, 2015.
