XIA Shafei was born in Shaoxing, China in 1989. She obtained her bachelor's degree in scenography from Chongqing University in 2012 and her master's degree in Visual Arts Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna (the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna) in 2020. She currently lives and works in Bologna, Italy. Her paintings explore the fetishistic desire and boundless solitude, capturing the zeitgeist through a unique approach with traditional ink on paper. Employed repetitively in her oeuvre, Xia’s signature characters and patterns recall the genre of floating world images in East Asian culture. While the animals are designated with distinctive dispositions in Chinese tradition, Xia’s anthropomorphism also signifies the oppressed primitive impulses in a playful and satirical manner. With the delicate treatment of paper and brushstroke, the artist lightheartedly depicts themes of intimacy, vulgarity, savagery, and violence, which confronts the viewers with ease yet radically ridicules an institutionalized way of life in a feminine language.
