In Qian Zhong’s painting practice, dogs appear as recurring symbols that intersect with themes of desire, class, and female identity. Simultaneously cherished and adorned, they occupy a space between intimacy and control—mirroring the tensions often imposed on women’s bodies and roles. Their fur, often decorated with glittering objects like diamonds, hair clips, and sequins, reflects the way aesthetic expectations and fantasies are displaced from humans onto animals, turning pets into extensions of social display and emotional projection.

These dogs are not passive props; their gestures—snarling, glancing back, obedient or restless—echo the complexities of submission and resistance. In many works, they function as ornamental companions, but also as metaphoric doubles of the fragmented female figures they accompany. Together, they move through spaces of spectacle and illusion, embodying the contradictions of power and vulnerability, performance and inner tension.

Through this motif, she explore how surfaces—both literal and symbolic—are used to contain, seduce, and obscure. The dog becomes a mediator between visibility and control, affection and possession, revealing the hidden anxieties that often lie beneath polished appearances.