deng qiwen is a curator based between Paris and southern China. Trained in jewellery design, art history, and cultural policy and management, she explores the interstices and porous zones of contemporary diasporic and transnational narratives.

Drawing on postcolonial, feminist and decolonial thought, her curatorial practice engages with polyphonic voices and emergent forms of knowledge, particularly within East and Southeast Asian contexts.

By unfolding the layers of cultural and epistemic hierarchies that shape the contemporary art landscape, she creates fissures: narrative spaces where invisibilized voices take shape, resonate, and transform through dynamics of friction, alteration, and symbiosis.

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Since 2021, she has been engaged with first-generation migrants and diaspora communities in Europe. In 2025, she founded mil.lieux, a non-profit organization dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices and fostering interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange.

She has curated ghostly distilled matters (2025) and La division : Individualisation écologique silencieuse (2021), and served as assistant curator for Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai: Breath of an Architect (2023) at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporainas well as for the 24th Biennale of Sydney Ten Thousand Suns x Fondation Cartier partnership (2024).

Her professional experience includes working with the curatorial team of the Fondation Cartier (2023-24), at Galerie Nathalie Obadia (2023) and at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum (2018), where she contributed to a wide range of exhibitions and artistic projects. She currently works at KADIST Paris as Gallery Coordinator (2025).