Ding Hongdan's works employ a realist approach to focus on the authentic lives and psychological states of her contemporaries, presenting reflections on everyday experience and social relations. Simultaneously, she draws materials from personal memory, social networking images, and popular culture. By continuously deconstructing and reconstructing original images, she juxtaposes reality and imagination, forming a visual sensibility that is sharp and humorous. Her creative practice navigates between reality and fiction, as well as between individual and historical narratives, and in doing so becomes the deepening theme of her work.

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Ding Hongdan began her studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2014, where she received her B.A. and M.A. degrees before obtaining her Ph.D. from CAFA in 2025. Recent exhibitions include: Intellectual Structures: Trigger, Judgment, and Decision, Each Modern, Taipei, China (2026); Archipelago Effect: From the Disappearance of the Surroundings to Ecological Reconstruction, BSQ Beijing Bonded Art Zone, Beijing, China (2025); Still Mad, MAMOTH, London, UK (shortlisted for the Best Art Gallery Exhibition of 2024 by Asian Contemporary Art Best of the Year); A Cloud in Trousers: Painting Today, West Bund Museum, Shanghai, China (2024); Erratum and Misalignment, MG Art Space, Beijing, China (2024); Patternmaker’s Maze, Lisson Gallery, Shanghai, China (2024); The Dancing Floor of the World, Gravity Art Museum, Beijing, China (2024); The Quest of Young Artists, Each Modern, Taipei, China (2024). Her recent museum exhibitions include: TAG New Contemporary II: Seaward, Tag Art Museum, Qingdao, China (2024; recipient of the “Tidal Wave Award” of the second TAG New Contemporary art project); Afraid, Start Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); and 2022 Wuhan Biennale, United Art Museum, Wuhan, China (2022). In 2024, she participated in the residency program at MAMOTH Gallery, London, UK (August 1 – November 29).