Qiaoling Cai ~ Keywords: historical rootedness, dialogues in making, publishing as practice, care-based methodology, matriarchal imaginaries

Qiaoling Cai anchors her practice in the deep currents of history, from which she weaves sustained and resonant dialogues across geographies. Her work spans writing, curating, publishing, and collaborative projects, moving fluidly between contemporary art and literature to explore how individuals and collectives endure, inherit, and forge connections within structural abandonment, violent narratives, and historical silences. Alongside her curatorial and writing practice, she has worked as an editor and publisher of artist’s books, regarding publishing not only as a means of dissemination but also as a site for research, dialogue, and long-term collaboration.

She conceives of exhibitions as contexts to be entered, traversed, and departed from, rather than as static displays. Within loosened connections, she cultivates bonds and shared steps, allowing intimacy and participation to grow within open networks of relations. She places greater trust in slow, low-energy, and care-based forms of practice as ways of sustaining action and mutual support under constrained conditions, rather than in production that serves grand narratives or the logic of visibility. Her recent work turns toward matriarchal imaginaries, envisioning them as a ground from which new forms of care, memory, and collective life might take root.

*Learn more about Qiaoling Cai's 20 minute performance I know I said this, but what do I mean? for CHOREIA ~ DAI's Aeroponic Acts 2025 at Centrale Fies in Italy. 

*Learn more about Qiaoling Cai's written MA thesis (DAI, 2025): The Weight That Stays: Dead Voices, Fissioned Inheritance, and Enduring Silences

*During their journey with DAI, Qiaoling Cai made significant contributions to: COOP Summit 2024 ~ Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Place-making as well as COOP Summit 2025 ~ Invitation to Actions: Ensembling, Sincering, Transmitting

*Follow Qiaoling's 'Life after DAI' via instagram