Icy Qiao is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose work spans animation, shifting picture, sculpture, and set up. Her follow explores the hidden, deep-rooted constructions of psychological expertise. Autobiographical in nature, her works delve into trauma, identification, and East Asian household constructions, dissecting her personal historical past to mirror broader social realities.
A graduate of the Royal Faculty of Artwork’s Narrative Animation program, Icy blends narrative and experimental methods in her work, difficult the confines of conventional linear animation and favoring emotionally-driven expression. By turning reminiscence, trauma, and anxiousness into tactile and visible kinds, she reclaims management over her inside world whereas opening an area for emotional resonance with the viewer.
Her work was completely collected by a nationwide first-tier museum in China in 2023, marking vital recognition inside each worldwide and home artwork contexts. She sees inventive creation as an ongoing technique of psychoanalysis, a option to reconstruct inside order by means of the continuous dissection of reminiscence and emotion. By way of this course of, she has carved out a definite house within the area of latest multidisciplinary artwork.
Carving Anxiousness: A Psychological Restore from Dream to Materials
In her 2025 work ‘A Dream of Enamel Falling Out, Now Actual’, Icy visualises unconscious anxiousness by means of a sequence of clay tooth sculptures. Ranging from a recurring dream— the place her tooth always fall out and are swallowed—she embarks on a technique of emotional response and psychological restore. The act of moulding every tooth, with its repetitive and sluggish rhythm, turns into a bodily ritual of therapeutic. Every tooth carries fragments of the dream whereas symbolising the reconstruction of private boundaries and expressive capability.
As Icy describes:
“Throughout a interval of recurring goals the place my tooth would fall out and be swallowed complete, I started recreating each in clay, as if extracting internalised emotional fragments from my physique. Klein’s idea of ‘aggression and reparation’ unfolded by means of this course of as I reworked unspeakable anxiousness into tangible materials. The tooth turned each remnants of goals and symbols of rebuilding self-boundaries and the power to precise. As I made them, my real-life anxiousness regularly eased.”
This work not solely continues her deep engagement with psychology but in addition additional demonstrates her use of multimedia to delve into private expertise.
Self-inflicted Ache: Tracing Emotional Echo Inside Household Fracture
Created in 2019, ‘Self-inflicted Ache’ is certainly one of Icy’s most emotionally charged early works. The 2-minute brief movie blends live-action and animation, breaking conventional narrative construction to discover how emotion ferments by means of reminiscence in a non-linear vogue.
The work was impressed by a childhood reminiscence of witnessing her mom chopping her personal face out of a sequence of household photographs, an act of silent defiance that turned a degree of departure for Icy’s reflections on disconnection, psychological rupture, and the internalisation of ache. Referencing Adler’s concept of the ‘consolation zone of trauma,’ she explores how emotional mechanisms lure people in cyclical replays of previous occasions.
Incorporating seven components and 6 actions, the movie regularly blurs the boundaries between imagined ache and actuality.
As certainly one of her early items, its kind is restrained, however by means of structural deconstruction and rhythmic repetition, Icy begins translating personal household reminiscences into an summary
visible language, permitting particular person expertise to resonate emotionally with viewers. This work marks the start of her ongoing exploration into the connection between emotion, reminiscence, and the physique.
Narrative Collapse: Absurdity and Fragmentation within the Info Period
In works like ‘Mind Journey’ and ‘Stream’, Icy continues utilizing animation and live-action methods to critique the cognitive disarray and social homogenization of the digital period. She consciously breaks the coherence of linear storytelling, permitting fragments, repetition, and ambiguity to turn out to be the structural core of emotional narrative, mirroring the anxiousness and fragmentation we expertise in actual life.
Her follow questions not solely media kinds but in addition the capability of narrative itself to hold emotional expertise.
Icy’s work constantly examines the advanced psychological dynamics of East Asian household tradition, notably pathological symbiosis, blurred emotional boundaries, and long-term repression. She investigates phenomena reminiscent of ‘large child syndrome’ and the ‘nice mom’ household dynamic, translating these culturally embedded constructions into symbolic visible language by means of animation, shifting picture, and set up.
By way of this ongoing technique of self-analysis, she gives viewers an area to mirror on how we’re formed by cultural forces—and the way artwork can turn out to be a delicate type of resistance.
Icy’s inventive course of is rarely constrained by medium. For her, artwork is a language, and the medium is its phrasing. She doesn’t impose fastened kinds, however lets the authenticity of expression information her decisions, choosing the medium greatest suited to every challenge’s emotional and thematic weight. Animation, stay motion, set up, sculpture—these are the shifting vocabularies she makes use of to inform her tales.
Her works are sometimes born on the intersection of private reminiscence and social psychology, specializing in how people find themselves inside household constructions, cultural identities, and emotional trauma. When confronted with inexpressible experiences, she fastidiously constructs formal and narrative frameworks to offer emotion an area to land and opens the chance for deep, reflective dialogue with the viewers.
In her follow, there is no such thing as a fastened approach or predetermined aesthetic, solely a persistent pursuit of emotional resonance that all the time begins with content material. It’s this freedom and honesty that give her work its enduring power.
