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“…the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it.”

Qin Jin’s actual work, the piece that ought really to be witnessed by an audience, remains hidden from them. Qin Jin’s most significant works have involved various degrees of arson, enacted upon a small group of specific objects that both before and after they are consumed by fire, invoke human nature as much as human experience in a broad inclusive sense, whilst simultaneously becoming the embodiment of an intense emotional trauma that belongs to the artist alone.

“The most violent act humans can do to anything is to destroy it so completely it disappears forever. Fire does this. We rarely see flames today in the course of our daily existence, outside of the kitchen. Fire is danger, it is cleansing. It is pure violence. I found it to be very in synch with my emotions.”