Su Duan (b. 1988, Cao County, Shandong, China) graduated from Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts in 2012 and currently lives and works in Shanghai.

Artist and poet Su Duan has been engaged in artistic practice since 2015, working primarily through painting while also exploring installation, conceptual actions, and poetry. For her, different media are not separate disciplines but interconnected tools for expression, sharing common themes and sensibilities.
A central concept in her work is the “sense of life.” Through observations of plants, animals, rural landscapes, memory, death, and folk rituals, she explores the subtle vitality that exists within everyday experience. Her paintings often focus on overlooked moments and ordinary subjects, revealing emotional and existential connections embedded in daily life.
Rooted in memories of northern China’s rural environment, her work frequently evokes villages, fields, vegetation, and traces of local culture. Rather than treating life and death as opposites, she sees them as intertwined states of existence. Paper funeral offerings, cranes, plants, and human figures appear throughout her works, forming poetic spaces that move between reality, memory, and imagination.
Influenced by artists and writers such as Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, William Faulkner, Peter Doig, and Mamma Andersson, Su Duan develops a visual language that combines narrative suggestion with dreamlike atmosphere. Her work reflects an ongoing exploration of vitality, memory, and the complex textures of human existence.