Born and raised in China, Jinya Zhao received her BA in 2017 from the China Academy of Art and her MA and MRes from the Royal College of Art in 2019 and 2021. In 2019, Jinya was invited as Artist-in-Residence in Southern Illinois University in USA, and in 2022 Taoxichuan Glass Studio in Jingdezhen, China. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London.

Jinya sees glass as an ideal medium to explore the themes of environment, emotions, and personal experiences. Her work is collected by museums and galleries expanding from but not limited to Prague Gallery of Czech Glass, Qingdao Art Museum, Southern Illinois University, Ulster Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum; her work is exhibited internationally, and she is having her solo exhibition at the Liuli China Museum in Shanghai, China in 2023.

In Jinya’s current practice and research, she asks the question of how the phenomena unique to blown glass can make connections between the maker and audiences to communicate and prompt connections to memory and the imagination by using qualities relating to the sublime such as colour, obscuring and revealing techniques, and form. And she proposes the concept of the “synesthetic touch” (i.e., by enhancing the visual experience of the blown glass sculpture enable audiences to follow their own experiences from vision to touch), and to reconnect and re-invoke that ability through a multisensory approached to her blown glass artwork.

Drawing the sublime by exploring colour, layering, obscuring, and revealing techniques together, all aimed at evoking memory and imagination through synesthetic medium, and providing a method beyond the visual, and to connect with the unreachable.