Born in Wuhan, 1989, Xinyi Cheng currently lives and works in Paris. She received a BA in Sculpture, Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2012 and an MFA in Multi-disciplinary Program, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore in 2014. In Cheng’s artistic practice, reflecting upon people’s life and playing with internal layers in the background, she carefully constructs scenes of interactions and intimacies. Those scenes mirror the characters’ inner world and further create a sensual experience for the viewers. Her works are often based on the scenes from everyday life as well as motives from Western art history, meanwhile, she often picks up her subjects among her friends and acquaintances, which are stacked with her imagination, to invoke a viewing mode closer to a kind of touching by unreal colors and substantial brushworks.

In 2019, Cheng was awarded the Baloise Art Prize 2019 of Art Basel. Selected solo exhibitions: “Xinyi Cheng”（Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, 2022); “Seen Through Others” (Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, 2022); “The Horse with Eye Blinders” (Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin, 2020). “Seen Through Others” is her first major institutional exhibition in France. A collection of more than 30 works created by her from 2016 to 2021, unveils the complex emotions, desires and dynamics that permeate contemporary daily life. While focusing on inner experience and interpersonal relationships, Cheng also extends her vision to the metaphysical relationship between humans, animals and natural forces, through a synchronous but opposing feeling state, demonstrates the artist's reflection on the meaning of coexistence with each other in the present.