Born in Zhengzhou, Henan, in 1970, and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. She currently teaches in the Fine Arts Department at South China Normal University in Guangzhou. Duan Jianyu’s paintings explore the tension between rapidly industrializing urban and rural areas in China; the friction between the long history of world art and radical Asian pop culture; as well as themes of mobility, cultural identity, migration, and family. She strives to create works that are both vibrant and tinged with a rural kitsch aesthetic, connecting these artistic qualities and observations with the experience of living in contemporary China.