Xinwen Cui: The Art World’s Savage Daughter
Hey, stranger drinking alone 01, 2024, 2024, 30cm x 40cm, Oil on Canvas
Interview by Katherine Elliott
Sai (Xinwen Cui) is an artist who defies categorisation. A multi-hyphenate artist, model and content creator, she is a force to be reckoned with. Her works with acrylic, pastels and oil paint often portray lone drunkards, organic subject matter and hybrid forms. With visual cues ranging from the wistful glances of Marie Laurencin’s subjects to Georgia O’Keeffe’s infamous floral motifs, this artist’s work is defined by something you can’t quite put your finger on. At Phantasy, we believe in letting the art and the artist speak for themselves. With Sai’s vast oeuvre, seeing is believing.
Phantasy: Thank you for your time. Could you briefly introduce yourself?
Sai: Hello, Phantasy. I'm Sai (Xinwen Cui). Born in 1995 in Dalian, a beautiful coastal city in northeastern China, I studied in Tokyo from 2013 to 2020 before returning to China to pursue art. I now work as an artist, model, and digital content creator.
0411-Dalian, 2023, 26cm x 37cm, Oil on paperboard
Phantasy: What made you want to be an artist and a painter?
Sai: I started painting at five and never stopped—simply because I loved it. It became a part of my daily life, as routine as brushing my teeth. Achieving financial independence allowed me to focus entirely on painting.
Was it passion that drove me to become a painter? Or was becoming an artist just the natural outcome of that passion?
Phantasy: Which artists or individuals have inspired you the most?
Sai: Early on, Egon Schiele and Marc Chagall profoundly shaped my work. Years later, Jerry Saltz’s How to be an Artist reignited my enthusiasm for daily artistic practice and helped me develop structured workflows, bringing order to my creative process.
Agonie des Eros, 2023, 130cm x 150cm, Acrylic on Canvas
Phantasy: How would you describe your art?
Sai: “Style” and “-isms” are labels later generations use to categorise past eras. If forced to define mine, I’d tentatively call it Poetry. “The savagery of life, the intensity of love—extreme romanticism and fervour.”
Phantasy: What is your creative process? Is there an element of spontaneity or do you follow a certain routine?
Sai: I follow a fixed ritual: quarterly retreats where I isolate myself in the studio for 7-15 days, cutting off all social interactions and distractions. While painting, I listen to world music or sip whisky, letting the canvas guide me into a meditative trance. I rarely plan compositions—they emerge spontaneously.
Phantasy: You mostly work with paint. What are you drawn to in particular with this medium?
Sai: I favour acrylics for their fluidity, quick drying, and stability. They allow rapid layering of emotions, which suits my temperament—intense bursts of feeling that rationality soon tempers. I start with wet acrylics or pastels to capture fleeting emotional undercurrents, then refine details with oil paints.
Phantasy: Organic subject matter, such as trees and flowers, seem to be a recurring motif in your works. What do they represent to you?
Sai: Flora and landscapes embody alternative forms of life on Earth. I’m captivated by trees’ untamed growth—nature’s paradox of randomness shaped over millennia into inevitability. To me, nature represents a fragment of universal truth.
Paradise , 2025 / 100cm x 100cm / Oil on Canvas
Phantasy: Your paintings often feature shades of blue, green, pink and purple. What do you think attracts you to these palettes?
Sai: Blues, in varying hues, permeate my work—a reflection of my obsession with the sea and the blue hour. Under that melancholic, rational blue, dreamlike colours compose poetry about life.
Impasse, 2023, 60cm x 60cm, Oil on Canvas
“Art itself resists the logic of social media... In this era of instant gratification, most viewers crave superficial sensory hits, like fast food for the eyes...Any vocation plus conventional attractiveness equals social media currency.”
Phantasy: For me, your works evoked a sense of otherworldliness, a kind of alien folklore. What do you think of that interpretation?
Sai: This is a fresh and intriguing perspective! I paint from memory, not references. When depicting a horse or tree, I reconstruct them mentally rather than using sketches or photos. This creates distortions that feel both familiar and alien—images that exist plausibly within the painting’s world but dissolve when scrutinised in reality.
Phantasy: What is the creative scene like where you live now? Are there any contemporary artists that you think we should know about?
Sai: I reside in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, home to the China Academy of Art. While countless artists undoubtedly thrive here, and China boasts many exceptional contemporary creators globally, I remain intentionally detached from art circles and commercialisation. For now, I prioritise solitary creation.
Spring Mountains, 2023, 100cm x 100cm, Acrylic on Canvas
Phantasy: Debates surrounding artistic gaze and representations of the feminine body, often seen to be subjugated in the traditional artistic canon, are rife in modern criticism. As an artist, how do you view your own portrayals of the female form?
Sai: Female figures rarely appear in my work, limited to the Hey, Stranger Drinking Alone series or nude bathers in landscapes. They simply exist: a woman dressed up for a date she’s been stood up for, another sunbathing naked by the shore—living as I do, in all their complexity.
Art should not force “politically correct” depictions. It is a manifestation of the artist’s psyche. Whether paintings that depict women stem from desire, aesthetic pursuit, or objectification, there’s no moral answer—desire transcends binaries. Yet, these debates highlight societal progress in gender discourse.
A Great Navigation, 2024, 100cm x 100cm, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas
“In an era where even a woman’s breath risks being labelled as feminism, I simply wish to create as a ‘human’ first and foremost. ”
Female: Tree Growth and Our Body, 2025, 200cm x 120cm, Oil on Canvas
Phantasy: I spotted the Guerilla Girls’ 1988 piece entitled The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist in your studio. Do these values of feminism and collective action inform your practice as an artist?
Sai: I believe this work has given me immense strength and conviction. It has led me to embrace the community that holds me and the group I represent. This piece constantly reminds me of the many pioneers who fought for women’s rights before me—their efforts carved out a more comfortable future for us. I, too, want to be such a person, because only when women stand at the heights can our voices truly be heard. This connection to the female collective is also reflected in my work, Pain, Arboreal Life, and the Female Body.
The Advantages Of Being A Woman Artist, Guerrilla Girls, 1988
Phantasy: In works from April to September 2024, you described this selection as “Savage Daughter”. What does this phrase mean to you?
Sai: The title borrows from the song ‘Savage Daughter’, embodying rebellious freedom. Early in my career, advisors urged me to develop a “commercial IP”, but forced branding felt artificial. By painting relentlessly without chasing trends, my authentic style found me.
Phantasy: Your triptych Hey, stranger drinking alone (June 2024) is especially striking. What drew you towards depicting this trio of faceless, solitary figures?
Sai: During that period, I had just moved from Shanghai—where I had many friends, to Hangzhou, where I knew almost no one. I often drank alone at home. Later, I travelled to Thailand by myself, wandering outside every night with a drink in hand. One evening, as I sat alone at the corner of a bar with my whiskey, a local invited me to join them. The same thing happened in Indonesia—strangers at the next table would call me over for a drink.
These paintings all depict solitary drinkers, each carrying their own stories—some amusing, some lonely, some painful. I, too, was one of those strangers drinking alone. But, on certain nights, you might tap a solitary drinker on the shoulder, sit beside them, and say, "Hey, tell me your story."
That’s one of the most romantic things about alcohol—it closes the distance between people, and between us and ourselves. Strangers meet by chance, share a drink, say hello, and then goodbye.
Hey, stranger drinking alone 03, 2024, 30cm x 40cm, Oil on Canvas
Phantasy: A recent Dazed article proposed the clickbait-esque question, “Do you need to be hot to make it as an artist now?”, linking the significance of outward beauty and social media algorithms in the art world. From your perspective, how do you view the increased visibility of the artist in our social media age?
Sai: This question starkly exposes the current dilemma: artists struggle to gain recognition for their actual work, no matter how exceptional.
Art itself resists the logic of social media, but photogenic faces thrive on it. In this era of instant gratification, most viewers crave superficial sensory hits, like fast food for the eyes. It’s identical to the "chef-with-model-looks/athlete-with-Instagram-face” phenomenon. Any vocation plus conventional attractiveness equals social media currency.
Amongst 1,000 people, perhaps 10 genuinely appreciate art. Of those, maybe 1 will connect with your art. But 800 of those same 1,000 are drawn to physical beauty. 50 might linger on your appearance... and incidentally, you happen to paint.
My personal stance is irrelevant—this is simply the arithmetic of our age. I’ve witnessed countless artists post their work into a void-like silence, only to gain explosive traction by pivoting to viral memes or suggestive selfies. Xiaohongshu overflows with such case studies.
As Dickens wrote: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." In today’s attention economy, even if your art can’t transcend niche circles, there remain alternative strategies for visibility.
I have stood here year in year out , 2024, 100cm x 100cm, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas
Phantasy: And finally, here at Phantasy, we love stories. Could you tell us your favourite story?
Sai: A Story from My Childhood
I want to share a tale I heard as a child, passed down from the adults.
There was an uncle of mine—a friend of my father’s—who worked as a sailor. Let’s call him Q. Q had a massive tattoo covering nearly his entire calf: a colossal fish thrashing in the ocean’s depths. He ate all kinds of seafood except fish—a rarity for someone from Dalian, a coastal city where people live off the sea. In Dalian, sailors are common. They endure months of gruelling voyages, only to return to land and indulge in the fleeting luxuries of modern life.
Aboard ships, fish are the primary sustenance. One afternoon, after over a month of exhausting labour, the crew hauled up an enormous fish.
How big was it? My mother never specified, only repeating: “enormous, unimaginably so.”
Q and his crewmates, seasoned by decades at sea, had never encountered anything like it. They claimed its eyes were larger than human fists, its struggles so violent the boat rocked as if battered by a storm.
Some urged, “Release it—this fish has become a spirit.”
Others insisted, “Eat it—it’ll feed us for days.”
They slaughtered the fish. The butchery began at dawn, stretching through sunset, then into darkness. That night, the crew feasted voraciously. The flesh carried the metallic tang of violence, slaughter, blood, and the thrill of conquest. At sunrise, the stench of fish and blood slowly evaporated under golden light, dissolving into the azure sea.
In the days that followed, sailors fell ill one by one. By the time they docked, some had died.
Q never ate fish again. He began frequenting temples and took to Fang Sheng (life liberation ritual)—releasing freshwater fish and Brazilian turtles into the ocean.
