The Triton Museum of Art presents Echoes in Color (Aug. 30, 2025 – Jan. 11, 2026) by Qiuwen Li. Qiuwen Li is a Bay Area-based artist from China whose work focuses on reimagining language through color and typography. As a bilingual person and a graphic designer, Li’s work opens up a dialogue about pouring meaning into different forms of communication and expression through creative ways of understanding language.
Born in China, Qiuwen Li moved to the United States to pursue her education in Design, earning a BFA in Graphic Design from St. Cloud State University and a MFA in Visual Studies with a concentration in Graphic Design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Now working as an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Santa Clara University, Li’s teaching and research focuses on the integration of typography, data visualization, and graphic design. Incorporating her knowledge and expertise into her art, Qiuwen Li seeks to delineate, deconstruct, and reconstruct the assumptions of multilingual communication and reframe them as more contingent on idiosyncratic understandings.
Qiuwen Li’s upcoming exhibit, Echoes in Color, explores language as both a visual and emotional experience.Through motion graphics and digital posters, Li transforms letters and words into abstract colored forms, creating “colorography,” a language system that encodes each letter with different colors and connects the same-colored letters by using lines. The exhibit also features Old is the New New, a series of experimental posters where Li uses color and form to interpret language on a personal level. “As a designer, I understand the need for legibility, but I am more concerned with communicating something more visceral, expressive, and imaginative. My work engages viewers in a way that evokes playing games and figuring out puzzles; they simply can’t get enough of it, and that’s a good thing, because that’s the key to engagement,” Li states.
Li’s design work has been exhibited in national and international venues, including the Boston University Art Galleries, CICA Museum in Korea, Tree Art Museum in China, A plus A Gallery in Italy, and MCSU Art Gallery in Poland. In addition to her academic practice, she has worked as a freelance designer for clients such as James Dayton Design, Reverie, and Medical Marketing Solutions. Li’s creative work and scholarly writing have also been recognized through numerous academic and professional awards, publications, and conferences, including Creative Quarterly, the Society of Typographic Arts, the College Art Association (CAA) Conference, the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), and Graphic Design in China (GDC).
Echoes in Color by Qiuwen Li began showing in the Digital Gallery starting Aug. 30, 2025.
The Triton Museum Art is a nonprofit institution and a vital community resource that provides accessible exhibition and education programs, which promote a broad range of contemporary California art. Through its multifaceted programs, the museum brings together the culturally diverse population of the Greater Bay Area to foster a better understanding of art and its role in building a strong community. The museum provides free parking and free admission; the museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm. The Triton Museum of Art is located at 1505 Warburton Ave. in Santa Clara.
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