Selected Group Exhibitions

Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts Exhibition
Wiesner Gallery
Cambridge, MA, USA
2025

ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
Wiesner Gallery
Artfinity
Cambridge, MA, USA
2025

SENSES
United Cowboys
Dutch Design Week
Eindhoven, NL
2024

The Laboratory of the Future: Gender & Geography
Venice Biennale
Venice, IT
2023

Everlasting Plastics
U.S. Pavilion
Venice Biennale
Venice, IT
2023

Artfinity: Art on the Screen
Kendall MIT Open Space
Artfinity
Cambridge, MA, USA
2025

Restrictive Topographies: the BLACK city
Keller Gallery
Cambridge, MA, USA
2022

Remote Landing
BCA Gallery
Cryptovoxels
Shanghai, CN
2021

Speak Into Being: Beyond Asian Silence
North Gallery
Yale School of Architecture
New Haven, CT
2021

Art Walk
Maryland Institute College of Art
Baltimore, MD, USA
2019

To Work
Dolphin Gallery
Baltimore, MD, USA
2019

Unravel The Code
OpenWorks
Baltimore, MD, USA
2018

Unravel The Code
Willem de Kooning Academy
Rotterdam, NL
2018

Press

Innovations at MIT
IN COLOUR - INDUSTRY FOCUS
August Issue, 2025

The 2025 Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts
Arts at MIT
2025

Writing

A Good Copy: Craft, Context, and the Ethics of Reproduction
Out of Frame Journal
2026

SENSES - The Dust Between Our Nails and Fingertips
Dutch Design Week
2024

Cheng Qin (pronounced chuhng chin) is a New York-based artist whose work looks at how the movement and translation of materials shape human perception and experience.

Cheng develops what he calls actant instruments: sculptural systems that shift relational aesthetics toward the agency of matter and make public the cultural erasures embedded within extraction. Working primarily with stone, he engages fragments shaped by industrial extraction. Cracked, discarded, or misread materials become the basis for structures that foreground weight, balance, and duration. Rather than imposing fixed form, he allows each element's history to influence how it is assembled, revealing tension instead of concealing it.

His process moves between hand carving, digital fabrication, and structural experimentation. Stones are subjected to conditions of stress, leaning, bearing, and compression, so equilibrium arises through adjustment. Shifting joints and exposed connections make force legible. Environmental factors such as gravity, weather, and touch continue to register on the work, extending it beyond static completion.

Cheng's practice addresses how extraction reshapes landscapes and how sculpture can operate within those terrains as a responsive presence. Experience working with Sarah Oppenheimer and Olafur Eliasson informs his technical rigor and spatial awareness. He was an artist-in-residence at Shiro Oni Studio in Japan, Aalto Residency in Finland, and at the Monopol School of Sculpture in Berlin. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Willem de Kooning Academie (Rotterdam), BCA Gallery (Shanghai), and Dutch Design Week 2024.

For all inquiries, please contact - studio@debris-affiliates.org

CHENG QIN