I am a Contemporary English Language Mother
Chunxiao Qu

In I am a Contemporary English Language Mother, Chunxiao Qu constructs a space where power, language, and authorship collide in a series of playful yet unsettling inversions. Through sculpture, neon text, and performative gestures, Qu questions whether reversing roles can ever truly dismantle the structures they seek to subvert.

By claiming the title of a ‘contemporary English language mother’ as a non-native speaker, Qu embodies a contradiction where authority is both seized and undermined. Her works confront the futility of reversal — where the gaze, once flipped, merely mirrors the original power dynamic, leaving its core disturbingly intact.

I am a Contemporary English Language Mother invites viewers to navigate a terrain where humour and contradiction destabilise certainty, leaving them to confront the unsettling realisation that even in reversal, authority remains a game that refuses to be won.

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Chunxiao Qu is a Melbourne-based artist born in China. Her interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, neon, painting, print-making, poetry and fashion. Humour, conceptual play and linguistic tension run throughout her work, as she explores themes of language, authorship, intimacy and identity.

Selected recent solo exhibitions include Melbourne Art Fair, FUTURES, Melbourne (2025); as tragedy / as farce, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2025); Art is a washing machine that is washing itself, FUTURES, Melbourne (2023); An artist doesn’t need a label, Borchardt Library Biannual Façade Commission, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo (2022-2023); COPY, 99% Gallery, Melbourne (2022); Chunxiao Qu, Lon Gallery, Melbourne (2021); The title is no longer relevant, Trocadero Projects, Melbourne (2021). Selected recent group exhibitions include Gertrude Studios 2024, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Person, woman, man, camera, TV, Blindside, Melbourne (2022); White Night Bendigo 2022, Bendigo; Collectively, West Space, Melbourne (2019); and Everything That Is Outside of Us, Palazzo Vai, Prato, Italy (2017).

She has published two poetry collections: This poetry book is too good to have a name & Logic Poetry (Discipline, 2022) and Popcorn, Porn of Poetry (no more poetry, 2021).

Chunxiao Qu is represented by FUTURES, Naarm Melbourne.