International Collaboration: Jia Aili

Counterpoints is an exhibition featuring Chinese contemporary artist Jia Aili (b. 1979, Liaoning, China), bringing together major paintings alongside a newly commissioned work. The exhibition explores industrialisation, post-socialist transformation, and the psychological and existential experience of the individual within the machinery of modern life.

Jia Aili’s large-scale figurative paintings draw on Eastern and Western intellectual and art-historical traditions. Characterised by a restrained, almost ashen palette, expressive brushwork and layered symbolism, his work reflects the disorientation of the individual amid technological acceleration and profound social change. His practice brings together philosophical traditions including Confucianism and Existentialism while remaining grounded in the social realities of contemporary China.

For Counterpoints, Jia presents monumental paintings alongside a site-specific installation created for Iniva’s large street-facing window. Inspired by Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, the work explores faith, doubt and transformation within a society marked by uncertainty. Together, the paintings and installation consider how memory, symbolism and imagination might offer ways of responding to the tensions between technological development, social transformation and individual experience.