Nini Sum

Nini Sum is an artist based in Berlin and Shanghai. She works across screen printing, collage, and sculpture, a practice built on material experimentation over more than fifteen years.

She grew up in Nanjing, one of China's most densely forested cities, and the texture, shadow, and smell of trees shaped her relationship to making before she had a name for it. That material memory runs through everything: the tree ring first appeared in her work as a printed surface, then became the structural body of her objects, and in her most recent sculpture series, Shēngshēng, it finally moves into three dimensions, the ring cut, printed, and built by hand into forms that hold something living at their center.

In 2010 she founded IdleBeats in Shanghai, China's first independent screen printing studio, which she ran for thirteen years. That practice, layering ink, building surfaces, working with the resistance and grain of physical material, defined her technical language and her understanding of what making by hand means.

Her Urban Landscape collage series (2019-2023) brought together classical Chinese Shanshui (ink landscape painting) imagery and contemporary urban fragments, exploring the dissolution of boundaries between past and present...

Solo Exhibition

· 2023 / SPACE WALK - Nini Sum Artist-In-Residence Solo Exhibition / Kunstraum / Nürnberg, Germany
· 2012 / SEE·SAW - Nini Sum Solo Exhibition / Identity Art Gallery / Hong Kong


Group Exhibitions (Selected)

· 2020-2021 / Worlds On Paper / Art Labor Gallery / Shangahi, China
· 2020 / Untitled and Unlimited / Times Museum / Poly Art Center / Beijing, China
· 2019-2020 / China Europe Illustrations and Images Exhibition / Helsinki, Finland
· 2019 / The Drawing Hand / Dansyz Gallery / Shangahi, China
· 2019 / Anime / Kult Gallery / Singapore
· 2018 / Tale Of Two Cities #4 / The Space Gallery / Shangahi, China
· 2017 / Screen Punch / Con Artist Gallery / New York, USA
· 2017 / Tale Of Two Cities #3 / Art Labor Gallery / Shangahi, China
· 2017 / Torino Graphic Days / Turin, Italy
· 2017 / IdleBeats Solo Exhibition / Serigraffeur / Berlin, Germany
· 2017 / MAPS / Newsagency Gallery / Sydney, Australia
· 2017 / PSA 5year Anniversary Group Exhibtion / Power Station Of Art / Shanghai, China
· 2016 / Tale Of Two Cities #2 / PlayClass / Shangahi, China
· 2016 / Facing the Climate / The Swedish Institute, Consulate General of Sweden in Shangahi / Shanghai, China
· 2015 / No Man’s Art Pop Up Gallery Oslo / Oslo, Norway
· 2015...