Qian Cui
Title
Dr.
Last Name
Cui
First name
Qian
Email
qian.cui@unisg.ch
19 results
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Item type:Publication, The Art of Utopia and Anti-Utopia: Online Poetry and Visual Art from China and Taiwan on Russia’s War against Ukraine(2026-04-16); Berg, Daria, and Qian Cui. “The Art of Utopia and Anti-Utopia: Online Poetry and Visual Art from China and Taiwan on Russia’s War against Ukraine.” Talk presented at the University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, April 16, 2026.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
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Item type:Publication, War, the Anthropocene and its Discontents: Visual and Poetic Perceptions of Russia’s War in Ukraine across the Taiwan Strait, 2022-Present(2026-07-25); Berg, Daria with Qian Cui. “War, the Anthropocene and its Discontents: Visual and Poetic Perceptions of Russia’s War in Ukraine across the Taiwan Strait, 2022-Present.” The 26th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies EACS, Venice, Italy, 25 July 2026Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Russia’s War in Ukraine: Reactions in Chinese Art and Literature on Both Sides of the Taiwan Straits(2025-06-17); Berg, Daria, and Qian Cui. “Russia’s War in Ukraine: Reactions in Chinese Art and Literature on Both Sides of the Taiwan Straits.” Public talk, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, June 17, 2025.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Speaking Truth to Power: Parrhesia and Perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War in Chinese Online Poetry and Visual Narratives, 2022-Present(2024-05-23); When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin felt confident in Xi Jinping’s support, cemented by pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’. While the world looked to China for a resolution to the crisis, China’s social media touted Russian propaganda in their coverage of the war while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens have been exploring the new social media as alternative avenues for creativity to express their views, posting visual art and literature such as poetry, painting and photography in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse selected works to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, duty, idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Here I argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. In the time-honoured tradition of the xiaoshuo—originally meaning small talk or gossip—the new artists and authors brave the risks to use social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect yet scathing critiques of power.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, ‘China and the Art of War: Perceptions of the Russo-Ukrainian War in Chinese Online Poetry and Visual Art Narratives, 2022-Present’(2024-08-29); Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 has rocked our understanding of the geopolitical world order and the role of war in the twenty-first century. China’s official reactions and its relations with Russia have confounded the world. Xi Jinping’s newly pledged ‘no-limits friendship’ with Putin manifested in China’s official media touting Putin’s war propaganda while censoring pro-Ukrainian news. Scholarly debates and global media have dissected the Russo-Ukrainian war from political, economic and social angles, yet few studies analyse Chinese unofficial reactions in popular culture. Chinese cyberspace has become a battleground for contesting discourses from China’s vernacular culture and the officially sanctioned culture of the Party State. This study responds to the urgent need to deepen our understanding of China’s vernacular culture by artistic and cultural perceptions of the war as seen in online poetry and visual art. Using Foucault’s concept of parrhesia (‘speaking truth to power’) with its connotations of freedom of expression, transparency, duty and gossip (Foucault, 1983), this study aims to explore China’s indigenous tradition of a vernacular culture ‘speaking truth to power’ in poetry on Weibo and WeChat and visual art narratives by Cao Fei, Huang Rui, Qi Shaoting, Li Qiang, Deng Kangyan and Badiucao in China and abroad. It will shed new light on how artists and writers brave the risks to go against the Party line and show solidarity with Ukraine, while voicing direct and indirect critiques of autocracy. This paper is jointly authored by Daria Berg and Qian Cui.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Chinese Dreams and Nightmares: Perceptions of War in China’s Vernacular Cultures(2024-12-05); Berg, Daria, and Qian Cui. “Chinese Dreams and Nightmares: Perceptions of War in China’s Vernacular Cultures.” Paper presented at the international conference Chinese Dreams and Nightmares: Perceptions from Visual Arts, Literature, and Vernacular Culture in the Sinosphere, University of St.Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, December 5, 2024.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Beyond the ‘China Dream’: Utopia and Digital Worldbuilding in Chinese Alternate History Fiction(2024-12-05); Cui, Qian, and Daria Berg. “Beyond the ‘China Dream’: Utopia and Digital Worldbuilding in Chinese Alternate History Fiction.” Paper presented at the international conference Chinese Dreams and Nightmares: Perceptions from Visual Arts, Literature, and Vernacular Culture in the Sinosphere, University of St.Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, December 5, 2024.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, ‘War and the Anthropocene: Chinese Visual and Poetic Narratives, 2022-Present’War counts among the Anthropocene’s great discontents, and voicing discontent about war requires great courage. A leaked document reveals that Putin and Xi Jinping had signed an agreement on media mirroring months before their pledges of a ‘no-limits friendship’ at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. When Russia attacked Ukraine, China’s social media touted Russian propaganda in their war coverage while censoring Ukrainian news and pro-Ukrainian perspectives. The Euripidean concept of parrhesia, ‘speaking truth to power’—or literally ‘saying everything one has in mind’—denotes freedom of expression, transparency, and duty, but also idle talk and gossip. Foucault (1983) has pointed out that truth-tellers face risk or danger but feel bound by duty to muster the courage and ‘speak truth to power’. Despite the risks, Chinese artists, poets and netizens from China, Hong Kong and the diaspora have voiced their discontent with Xi Jinping’s support of the Russian war by exploring alternative avenues for creativity, posting visual art and poetry on social media in support of Ukraine. This talk will analyse dominant themes in artworks by Cao Fei, Huang Rui, and Badiucao, and poems by Liao Weitang, Deng Kangyan and Xi Yongjun to discover how they ‘speak truth to power’. Here we argue that China’s vernacular culture draws on its indigenous tradition of parrhesia, celebrating freedom of expression in visual or literary narratives, fuelled by the storytellers’ sense of duty to their country to ‘speak truth to power’. The new artists and authors brave the risks of using social media as vehicles of expression for their indirect critiques of power.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Art of Anti-Utopia: Visual Narratives of the Chinese Dream and the Covid-19 Nightmare.Berg, Daria, and Qian Cui. “The Art of Anti-Utopia: Visual Narratives of the Chinese Dream and the Covid-19 Nightmare.” In Re-Thinking Literary China: A Festschrift in Honor of Andrea Riemenschnitter, edited by Jessica Imbach, Justyna Jaguścik, and Brigit Knüsel Adamec, 271–296. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2025.Type:Book chapterJournal:Re-Thinking Literary China: A Festschrift in Honor of Andrea Riemenschnitter