What does migration look like when viewed not only through geography, but through memory, ecology, technology, and human connection?
At NYCxDESIGN 2026, artist Qinaus explored this question through Life Flow, a multi-perspective painting presented in Becoming, an international art and design exhibition curated by NotYetArt from May 16-18, 2026 at Sanders Studios in New York.
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Presented during one of the world’s leading design festivals, Becoming brought together international artists, designers, and interdisciplinary practitioners exploring themes of identity, transformation, perception, and the evolving relationship between individuals and their environments through contemporary visual culture and cross-media practices.
Selected through a formal jury review process from more than 100 international submissions, the exhibition ultimately featured 10 works by 14 participating artists, among them, Qinaus’s Life Flow, a multi-perspective visual narrative exploring ecological awareness, migration, and interconnected systems of perception.
Life Flow is a multi-perspective painting. Blue seagulls appear as observers in motion: flying sideways in formation, diving, and creating a sphere-like sensation of speed through the movement of their wings. From the seagulls’ perspective, viewers are invited to see schools of koi moving beneath the water, along with green landscapes and the shifting surface of the river. From the koi’s perspective, the water itself becomes green, merging underwater plants with the reflections of riverside trees.
Through these overlapping viewpoints, the painting asks viewers to move beyond a single position. It is not only about looking at nature, but about understanding how perception changes depending on where one stands.
The inspiration behind Life Flow is deeply connected to Qinaus’s earlier experience in environmental advocacy. During her university years, she served as president of the Harbin Institute of Technology Green Association, a student environmental organization of around 400 members. The group focused on ecological education, public outreach, and environmental initiatives across Northeast China.
In 2012, Qinaus organized a wetland protection trip to Hegang, leading students from Harbin by train to observe crane migration. The experience of waking before dawn to witness birds moving along the East Asia-Australasia migration route left a lasting impression on her. Years later, this memory became part of the emotional and visual foundation of Life Flow.
For Qinaus, migration is not only a natural phenomenon. It is also a personal and professional condition.
Having worked in the global technology industry across China and the United States, she understands movement as both physical and psychological. Her own journey from China to the U.S. became another form of migration, one shaped by uncertainty, adaptation, cross-cultural communication, and collaboration.
This experience also informs her ecological way of seeing. In both nature and professional life, each participant exists within a larger system. Every bird, fish, landscape, user, colleague, and collaborator carries a different perspective. Life Flow becomes a meditation on how these perspectives overlap, conflict, and eventually form a broader image of connection.
In this sense, the painting is not only a landscape. It is a visual map of movement, memory, and coexistence.
Through Life Flow, Qinaus brings together environmental consciousness, personal migration, and contemporary global experience. Her work reflects a quiet yet powerful understanding of interdependence, between species, cultures, individuals, and systems.
Her participation in NYCxDESIGN 2026 Becoming marks an important moment in this ongoing practice. Within the context of the exhibition, Life Flow resonates strongly with the theme of becoming: a state of continuous transformation shaped by movement, perception, and the environments we pass through.
Notably, another recent work by Qinaus, Whispers of the Heartsea, is currently featured in the Pacific Art League (PAL) Exhibition 2026 in California, further reflecting her growing presence across contemporary interdisciplinary art platforms in the United States.
Through experiences spanning technology and cross-cultural life, Qinaus continues to develop a distinctive visual language rooted in personal memory and lived experience. Her work transforms individual stories into broader reflections on coexistence, perception, and human connection within a rapidly changing world.
For Qinaus, to become is to move, to observe, to adapt, and to continue searching for connection across changing landscapes.
