IMAGES OF WOMEN exhibition artist | Ruiqi Qiu

Warrior Tattoo is a visual art project composed of photographs, a video and a poem. This work aims to honor the female identity and to respect possibilities of gender, in order to oppose the discrimination and limitation supported by patriarchy. It also combines the tattooing technique, an ancient method of conveying spirit and belief. I chose to tattoo female organs (womb, vulva and breasts) with the dark color on an Asian woman’s portrait which implies my race and female identity. The portrait is not a perfect and accurate photograph because I am sick of the many requirements that demanded women to be the right and appropriate woman who is defined by others. Meanwhile, the damage made by a needle on the surfaces of photos reminds viewers that gender issues are happening and keep making an impact in the real world. In addition, I have designed different patterns to represent the female organs in different conditions. It appeals to women to consider the differences of cultural backgrounds or physical body situations between each other. A pattern describes a kind of life of a woman. A series of patterns depict many different types of lives of female communities, showing the possibilities of a woman’s life wherever she comes from. I attempt to connect women from different races and cultural backgrounds, and encourage them to reflect on their female experiences and seek things in common from other females’ lives. Women are sharing the destinies structured by patriarchy. Meanwhile, women also share their courage while living in an unfair world and striving to improve inclusivity in societies. Women do have not only sisterhood but also warriorhood.

Born in 1993 in Nanchang, China, Qiu Ruiqi moved to Melbourne in 2019 and graduated with a Master’s degree in Photography at RMIT University in 2021. Qiu Ruiqi is a photographer interested in the relationship between reality and its photographic representation. The photographic and sculptural work questions the sense of reality and the concrete. It disrupts the unconscious reading of authenticity to stimulate a rethinking of the intersectional area of photographs’ content and the real world outside the image. She is obsessed with exploring new ways of understanding photography with a sceptical attitude toward the common views of photographs. As a Chinese and Asian female and a queer, Qiu Ruiqi engages gender issues in her work to reflect women’s sisterhood and warriorhood and highlight the absurdity of patriarchy. And concerning race issues that minorities face, she paid attention to expressing the voice of her own race and the situations of other communities of minorities.