Sitian Zeng (b. 1995, China) is a Glasgow-based artist and doctoral researcher at the Glasgow School of Art. Over the past decade, she has actively engaged in artistic practice and built her career through painting, mixed-media art, and moving images. Her practice-led research lies within interdisciplinary contexts across areas such as painting in the expanded field, subjectivity, identity, mass media, and the power structure in the post-digital age. Sitian’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent highlights including the Watercolour Prize at the RWA 172nd Annual Open Exhibition (2025, Bristol) and participation in Crisis/Death/Resurrection: A Painting Symposium (2024, Cork).

Thanks for being with us, Sitian! Can you tell us how you arrived at the theme of your work?
I think the central theme of my practice, which is digital culture, is strongly bound with my growth under the influence of this post-digital world, where we are absorbing overwhelming and unstable information, which sometimes even misleads us. My painting incorporates digital references such as pixels, grids which resemble screens, but also a sense that traces back to earlier times, to childhood memories, to something that existed before the digital. I enjoy the tension when I bridge them together in my practice. For example, the artwork Synthetic Flora and the Edge of Nature has the pixelation effect but is also depicted on yellow-toned paper, resembling a manuscript from ancient times, which starts to fade.

Can you elaborate on the significance or symbolism of the chosen title of your
work?
Yes, the painting Echoes evokes a dialogue between myth, dream, and everyday life. In this painting, a stone bust, like a fragment of a forgotten deity, emerges amidst a field of blooming tulips, while a contemporary figure appears through a portal resembling a ghostly screen. These layers collapse time into a suspended space where eternity and transience blur. The title ‘Echoes’ refers to the resonance between the inherited symbols (i.e. statues) and digital apparitions (i.e. figures appearing in a grid resembling a digital screen).

Another work, Synthetic Flora and the Edge of Nature, indicates the resonance and tension between synthetic and natural elements. The edges of the watercolour paper bear scorched marks from fire, their yellowed traces recalling ancient manuscripts. The central flower appears like an artefact from an unknown future: a carnivorous bloom, half-realistic and half-digital, blossoming from the charred margins of fragile manuscripts. Its form dissolves into digital fragments, as if a myth were quietly emerging. The work navigates between the organic and the synthetic, the relic and the phantom.

Can you walk us through your creative process?
My practice is a combination of artistic practice and research. Studio practice, reading, writing, analysis, reflection, meditation… they are all interrelated parts of my creative process. Even though I mainly work with watercolour, I expand my watercolour by installing it in a creative format, or recreating my work by filming and editing my painting process into moving images. I normally do not have a plan for my practice; I allow my mind to slip between different ideas and let my artworks guide my impulses and bodily movements.

How do you know when a piece is complete?
I really enjoy this question, as I think some of my works are actually incomplete when there are large blank areas in the painting, but it gives a sense of completeness. I think it is mostly because my intuition tells me to stop, or in another way, the work will let me know it is complete; it is a moment I know the work cannot accept one more brush stroke.

Which artists inspire you? Are there non-artistic influences, such as literature or
music, that impact your work?
I enjoy reading philosophy, especially the works of post-structuralist Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I enjoy reading how philosophers connect our daily life experiences with the abstract ideas. The abstract nature of their written text somehow opens up new channels of imagination for my painting practice.

Are there any upcoming events or additional information you would like the audience to know?
I hope to keep growing my painting practice and will continue updating my artworks on my personal website. Alongside my art practice, I am also a practice-led researcher focusing on subjectivity and identity in the post-digital age. In the future, I plan to develop my own watercolour course, and details about it will be available on my website.

Connect with Sitian on Instagram, or on her website.