Kenix Xiaoqing Liang (b.1995, China) works in paintings that re-imagine living forms in the mundane life and nature and constructs a world where collision, negotiation, and re-establishment between the human world and habitats of other creatures constantly happen. Often staging encounters between contradictory forces embedded within shared living spaces—the flourishing and the decaying, the animate and the inanimate, the predator and the prey, the man-made and the natural—the paintings fuse allegory with scientific imagery to reconsider entrenched power dynamics in nature and to uncover the latent narratives they contain. By attending to overlooked forms of life and the fragile yet persistent systems they inhabit, the paintings invite a reconsideration of belonging—not as dominance over territory, but as participation within entangled networks of coexistence and shared vulnerability as conditions for imagining alternative futures. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2023 and BA from University of California, Los Angeles. Recent selected exhibitions include Villepin, Hong Kong (2026); Gene Gallery, Shanghai (2024).

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I started my college with the major in Economics in China. After freshman year, I decided to go the U.S. and study Art. I didn’t grow up in an artistic family, but I was always interested in all forms of creative practice and sensitive to everything visual. Transferring from Economics to Art made me feel more true to my nature but also meant a lot more to explore. You were not told what kinds of art you should do, you just tried and failed. It was not until the third year in Art major when I decided to pursue painting as my main practice.

Your work often explores relationships between humans, animals, and plants.

How do these connections begin to take shape in your practice? I painted nature when I first started to make paintings. I was mostly painting landscape, some kind of magical landscape that I imagined I could immerse myself in ( I always have this kind of fantasy since I was little, a container that holds the benign unknown). Later my perspective zoomed in and I thought about the intimate/dangerous/intense/harmonic moments happening among creatures in nature. Since Pandemic, I felt it urgent to reflect on human’s position in nature and relationships between humans, animals and plants, and tried to make paintings to reimagine the existed power dynamics in nature and discover hidden narrative within them. I was influenced by theories of Animism and Ecological Thinking, and wanted to make paintings that express the interconnectedness in the world. I think this is a way of me finding the healing power through painting in this era of climate change and ecological crisis.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

I have a routine and also work spontaneously. I collect images in my daily life and make tons of drawings. As I draw more and more, a clearer idea would (hopefully) emerge and I would do more studies for that idea, while looking art the images I collected to see what speaks to the idea. When I am actually painting, I rarely completely stick to the sketch since color is a big part in my paintings and how the color works on the canvas would significantly impact the original idea and pushes me to react spontaneously and reconsider many things, which sometimes can be very painful. I guess this painting curve is made intentional, I always want to keep the painting open until the later stage of the process.

Flora and fauna appear throughout your works. How do these motifs evolve as you develop a painting?

My works re-imagine the earthly or ‘lesser’ forms of nature including insects, animals, plants, which are often viewed mortal and unclean, in the subterranean world. One hand vulgar, mortal, and unclean, the sub-astral world also evokes mythology, creation, and Eros. Historically, genre paintings were viewed as the lowest in the hierarchy of all subject matters. Scientific illustrations were only popular in biologists and some niche communities. While I do not aim at making accurate scientific illustration; however, driven by the fascination in their beautiful forms and their living mechanism that is so different from humans; for example, camouflage is an important protection mechanism in nature, I found a great freedom in these subjects matter which can embed my memories and emotions, my curiosity and confusion, fear and desire.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

The major challenge, as faced by many artists, is to sustain my art practice when the exhibition exposure or artwork sales is not consistent. The anxiety of making my ends meet can be very overwhelming sometimes, but I still have to keep working the next day when I wake up because I can’t think of another way of living except making art. It’s important to have a community of friends where we can share resources and support each other. I also appreciate the support and acknowledgement from my family.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

I am making a series of paintings that focus on the liminal space between habitats of living creatures.

Text and photo courtesy of Kenix Liang

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bunbohenry/