Qiu Zhijie (邱志杰; born 1969) is a contemporary Chinese artist who works primarily in video and photography.
By 1999, his work began receiving overseas interest with his inclusion in Revolutionary Capitals: Beijing-London at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
In 2007 he had his first solo exhibition in the United States at the New York gallery Chambers Fine Art.
In 2005, his work was exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Between Past And Future: New Photography And Video From China, including Tattoo 1, which explores Qiu's assertion that in our media-saturated age, "signs and codes have overpowered actual human beings, and our bodies have become merely their vehicles."
The Tattoo series in particular further explored the concept of free-floating symbols and words that were imposed on the individual.
"[1] According to Qiu in an interview from 2001, the most significant turning point in his career was his work producing the installation Public Life/Glass Toilet (1994), which led to an ongoing interest in revealing the otherwise obscured practices of art production.
He has proposed ways to develop the concept of “total art” in both formal academic and professional contexts.