Check Out Qieer Wang’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Qieer Wang.

Hi Qieer, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Hello, my name is Qieer Wang. I’m a director, animator, and painter living and working in Queens, New York. I was born and raised in Chengdu, China, and I came here as an art student in 2014-a terrifying but exciting immigration journey that I think a lot of people share. It wasn’t an easy move. I had to quit my full-time job, and my mother wasn’t a big fan of the idea until my acceptance letter from MICA ILP arrived.

Those two years were transformative. In the last one, I fell in love with animation as a medium, specifically frame by frame. It’s just like magic. It also brought back everything I grew up watching: Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow and Chicken, Scooby-Doo. That inspiration still finds its way into my work.

Life is an experiment, and the exciting outcomes show up out of nowhere, especially when you bring no expectations. I brought something extra: a bag of things I definitely didn’t want to do. That was my prompt for a brand new career in a brand new city after I graduated in 2016. I moved to NYC and lived in north Brooklyn. I still vividly remember the day I turned down my first internship offer and took home my first freelance gig instead, proudly keeping the promise I’d made to myself.

Fast forward five years and I was still freelancing, working at the junction of editorial, brands, and commercials. During COVID, I took the hint from a Google animation project and started an LLC. Very soon after, an old college friend sent an advertising inquiry my way, which led to the first yearly Container deal for my not-even-fully-formed studio, QIE MEDIA. Around the time that wrapped, I approached Netflix Animation about an apprenticeship program, and it quickly became my first full-time job in this country. The film I worked on was With Kind Regards from Kindergarten, a beautiful story about overcoming hardship through imagination. Sadly, it was cancelled on its way out.

Since then I’ve gone back to building QIE MEDIA as a creative boutique, I usually work hand in hand with artists. I’ve had the fortune of working with a group of artists from QIE collectives on commercials, PSAs, and episodic videos. I’ve never forgotten the reason I created QIE in the first place, to visualize the unspeakable. That goes back to my early Cartoon Network inspiration: I love those ridiculous, impossible scenarios that unfold episode after episode, and how, once the chaos settles, something gets told quietly. With Anca Vlacan, I created Perfect Match, about a Chinese-Romanian mom-and-pop matchmaking business struggling to survive. With Calvin Lofton, I created Sassy, set in a Yao Guai fantasy world rooted in Monkey King lore, where two-headed siblings try to be helpful with everyday tasks and may accidentally upend the outdated system of their world. No spoilers about what I’m working on now, but some of it falls into the same lanes.

Away from the screen, and aside from making small renovations to my apartment; what I’ve enjoyed most lately is working on canvas. Acrylic can be tricky, but figuring it out is so much fun. I’ve been documenting the process on my new YouTube channel. There’s something oddly satisfying about making timelapse shorts.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Staying independent takes a lot of courage and discipline, and it hasn’t been a smooth ride, especially with the immigration visa process in the way. For a while I felt possessed by a visa demon: submitting work to awards and festivals, screenshotting every website where I spotted my name, uploading the evidence to my attorney’s Google folder, then starting the loop all over again. This loop ended after two years, but it felt like a lifetime. Thanks to the people who supported me along the way, otherwise I don’t see myself pulling it off alone.

A few years ago I joined a women’s group here in New York. Out of about a hundred members, only two work professionally in art and design, and I’m one of them. Seeing that with my own eyes made me realize how niche my work is from a societal perspective. It’s a harsh truth, but a valuable one to learn by heart, and it’s made me appreciate art and serious artists even more.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My artwork has always been trying to visualize the unspeakable. A mood that comes and goes, I wrap it in an animated loop. In my animated shorts, I like to create a scenario and look at the character’s experience from the outside. In early works like Therapy Room, it’s a short that explores a therapist’s therapy session. Like in dystopian rooms and title untitled gifs, they were attempts to depict mental disorders through the bodies. A new short I’m currently working on is going to look at a character’s experience from within.

I love making abstract portraits, and I particularly love drawing crowds. Humans are mythical creatures, especially when there are a lot of them. It’s full of dynamic movement of bodily postures, endlessly expressing emotional tendencies, interpersonal relationships, projected beliefs, and beyond. Just like I love learning about crowd psychology — it’s a never-ending symphony. My recent acrylic paintings focus on reinterpreting some of my crowd drawings. Making sure the process of making them is as exciting and fun as possible is my only goal.

What does success mean to you?
I think the world is ruled by a gigantic pendulum, and its rhythm defines most things, including what success is. The rest of us are smaller pendulums, influenced by the big one whether we like it or not. So my definition of success lives in its progression. In my mid-20s I chased independence because I needed freedom, so publications, visa status, and financial independence were what defined it. That started to change after I settled down in New York in 2024, though not completely, because I still think it’s pretty badass to sponsor my own wild dreams.

The other thing I’ve always noticed but never confronted in my own path is the assumption that infinite growth is better. If we’re velocity, speeding up is only half of what we can do. Why isn’t slowing down the better one? I guess that’s part of my updated definition of success: being able to speed up or slow down freely without judgement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.qieerwang.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/qieerwang/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@qieerwang