 he 34-year-old artist Qiu Anxiong may easily be considered one of China's emerging stars. His ink-and-wash like animation work,“The New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans,”which depicts an increasingly commercial world facing a 9/11 like attack, was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed features at this year’s Shanghai Biennale.
 The animated film (See film clip at bottom of this page) cleverly uses traditional Chinese ink-and-wash painting style to present a world that springs to life with humanity, but is soon overwhelmed by building and hyper development. Before long, a wonderful and creative black-and-white narrative of birth and life becomes overpopulated by people, cars and oil jacks. The ensuing destruction of the environment closes with what appears to be a 9/11 like attack as islamic warriors appear and then planes hit what appears to be the World Trade Center in New York.
The Shanghai Biennale introduction makes no reference to 9/11, but instead calls Qiu Anxiong's work a "witty and highly inventive work" that shows how "men are driven by desires to conquer nature and build structures where they can enjoy things abrought about by civilization." But this piece ends with almost a warning that perhaps the commercial development and environmental destruction now taking place (perhaps particularly in the U.S. and China) may be triggering the disasters around us.
The title of the film refers to an ancient book of mythology, "Classic of the Seas and Mountains＂, which describes myths as well as the geological make up of the earth. But Qiu eventually sets his mythological tale in the modern world. The animated film was an amazing feat because it consists of about 6,000 original drawings and countless hours of post-production work, all of which was completed in about six months.“It almost killed me,” Qiu says. “Some days I only slept two or three hours.”
His hard work has apparently paid off. The screening room at the Shanghai Art Museum was often crowded with viewers during the Shanghai Biennale, which drew a record 280,000 visitors. In Qiu Anxiong’s film, he is really tracing the arc of humanity -- the birth, life, decline and death of a civilization.
After the heavens and earth are separated in the animated film's opening moments, huts sprout up but are quickly dismanted. A city rises from the ruins, its walls are extended to and from the Great Wall. Frightening black birds plunge from the clouds and throw down a Pandora’s Box —- Qiu’s metaphor for an industrialized world. As time progresses, small villages and fields morph into high-rises and modern monsters emerge.
The 20-minute film work uses a slow rhythm and then pulsating music. The magical narration and use of a modern medium fuse together flawlessly. Alan Riding and Marlise Simons, reporters from the New York Times who visited Shanghai in October, praised the animation for its gorgeous images and its haunting narrative.
Zhang Qing, who organized the Shanghai Biennale, said:  “The work combines ancient fables with the present and the future. We can see the past in the future and encounter the future in the past, as if the world is a panorama. It fit the theme of this year’s Biennale, ‘the future constructs the history’ precisely.”
The work was taken from Qiu’s illustration book, “New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans.” Created within the last two years and bound using a traditional thread binding, the book is organized with paintings on the left and historical stories on the right. He adds a twist to the historical tales by using cloned sheep, KFC, a submarine and a UFO to portray the monsters of the modern age.
“The ancients recognize the world with an open heart. Modern people are too self-confident, they depend on knowledge too much,” Qiu says. He explains his inspiration for the work by saying:  “I prefer something beyond knowledge. I use my senses and perceptions to experience the world.”
This is how Qiu Anxiong connects the miracles of “The New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans”—- a Chinese masterpiece about mythical creatures compiled between the fourth and first centuries B.C. with the bizarre and unusual of the real world.
A new star of media art, Qiu’s works are suddenly in demand across the globe. His works have been on view throughout China including, MoCA Shanghai’s first biennale exhibition, “Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity,” “Award-Winning Works of Chinese Contemporary Art Award” at the Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, “A Yellow Box in Qingpu: Contemporary Art and Architecture in a Chinese Space” in Shanghai, “Crossovers: Beyond Art & Design” in the Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai, and they have also appeared at“ArtBeijing 2006.”
His works are also sought after by some of the biggest collectors of Chinese contemporary art.  Each of Qiu’s five video and animation works fetched $10,000. Some copies of his New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans" have sold for $35,000.
In 2005, the Swiss collector Uli Sigg purchased his first animation work, “In the Art,” and a second video work called “Jiangnancuo.” Other collectors of Qiu Anxiong’s works include Jane DeBevoise, former Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum, and Michael Sullivan, a professor emeritus of art history at Oxford University. UBS, the Swiss bank, also has a copy. And Johnson Chang of Hanart and Universal Studios and its director Pi Li sell Qiu's work.
“Qiu Anxiong is a very active young artist,” said Pi Li. “His works are innovative, his perspective and expressions are very unique. We’ve never seen this before.”
Qiu Anxiong was born in 1972 in the southwestern city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province. Qiu was influenced by the thoughts of avant-garde art in Chengdu. After graduation, Qiu says he dreamt of becoming an artist. He spent a year at a design company in Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, before immersing himself fully in avant-garde art.
“I painted many paintings like these” he said, showing a pile of paintings nearby. The expressionist color blocks of the works seem to reflect an overwhelming experience. “I painted at night in my rented house after work.  The table I worked on was not much bigger than this piece of paper.”
In spite of his parents disapproval, Qiu left Shenzhen and returned to Chengdu. He was able to paint freely in Chengdu, working all day long. He also met with other artists, such as Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya, He Duoling and Shen Xiaotong. He even opened a bar in the city named “Bistro” with some friends. It became the base of artistic circles in Chengdu and also became a popular rock venue.
Qiu recalls this saying,“In 1997, I even joined a band as a drummer. After I left, it gradually became the important venue of Chengdu rock and underground music.”
In 1998, Qiu enrolled the College of Art at the University Kassel in Germany. He spent six years in Germany, and experienced a great deal of culture shock resulting in his new awareness and attitude towards Western society. Qius says:“Modern society is under the rule of Western society, even though you identify with its cultural values, the identity barrier will stop your representation. The best thing I could do to keep my own identity was to begin reading Nan Huaijin’s books and learn traditional things.”
 Today, Qiu is comforted spiritually by Chinese classical texts. The effect of traditional culture often appears in his works. He completed a series of abstract oil paintings in the ink-and-wash style that carry the same feeling as traditional Chinese classical landscapes. For Qiu, “to paint the landscape on canvas is to be symbolized by business.”
New media art — primarily German contemporary art — helped him find a way to break through traditional and past artistic barriers.“Painting is actually on the edge,” he says. “I want to do more things, painting is not enough.”
In addition to working on and discovering new art mediums, Qiu devotes his mind to study and the research of Eastern classic texts, such as the Four Books, Five Classics, Taoism and the Sutras. In understanding the East and West and past and present, he hopes to find a new art expression where these cultures intersect.
Qiu, who was a student of Zhang Xiaogang and Ye Yongqing in Sichuan, said he learned a great deal from the two artists, and also was influenced by the works of the South African artist William Kentridge and the animation studios at the University of Kassel.
Qiu says he returned to China in 2004 and began teaching at Shanghai Normal University. He also took up new media. This is what he said in an interview at Biz Art in Shanghai, late last year. "The new meda is gradually becoming one of the main artistic forms. I didn't get involved in those media creations when i was abroad, as I thoughty they belonged to Western culture thus had nothing to do with us. Those ideas were inherited from my Sichuaan period influenced me a lot. Of course, now I don't think so. This is a trend and it's happening here."
Here in Shanghai, where other new media artists like Yang Fudong and Xu Zhen work, Qiu Anxiong has set up shop. His two-room apartment serves as both his living space and art studio. You’ll find his computer, canvases, clothes, and DVDs, but no video camera.“I do not have a video camera yet,” Qiu says with a smile. “When I shot‘Jiangnancuo,' the camera was borrowed from Yang Fudong.”
“Jiangnancuo” is an narrative video work in which Qiu expresses the relationship between time and space through subtle changes. The misty landscape of Jiangnan (the south area of Yangtze River) is peaceful. There are birds and still trees but the calm is shaken by nerve-racking music. The combination of these two feelings is like a paradox. You see one thing but feel another. The artist’s account in his own words is philosophical, both stillness and movement are the notes of time, the split second of images, and the luck to live or die. Simply put, there is no difference between a moment and a predestined fate.
“Jiangnancuo” is just one example of Qiu’s well-known quiet narratives. He manages to capture the slight changes in heaven and earth beautifully. He goes beyond narrating the film, and he is fully engaged and becomes a part of the scene. 
Another animation work “Butterfly Effect” was perhaps the first piece to establish his artistic style. His animated film “In the Air” embodies humanism and, like “The New Surtra of the Mountains and the Oceans, is filled with humor and fantasy. In 2006, “In the Air” won Honorable Mention at the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, which were organized by Uli Sigg.
Remarkably, all the work is done by Qiu himself, working from a small apartment studio in Shanghai. He paints with acrylics in a small room, which also serves as his photographic studio. The acrylic gives the appearance of ink-and-wash painting, but allows him the flexibility to put on additional layers with a canvas rather than paper than wrinkles with ink. Once the image is painted, he takes a snapshots of each portrait with a digital camera. The work is then transferred to the computer, where it can be edited and animated.
These days, Qiu Anxiong has a hectic schedule. He’s got many ideas in the works. He plans to return to Chengdu to shoot a short dramatic film and begin a new project about the cultural archaeology during the Republic of China period. Of course, he adds, “My ‘New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans’ will continue.”
Qiu Anxiong's animated film "The New Sutra of the Mountains and the Oceans"
Translated by Wei Ying
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