Hai Rihan is an artist from Inner Mongolia, who received his art education from the Central University for Nationalities. A Vice Professor in the Department of Art, Inner Mongolia Normal University. He has participated in many contemporary art exhibition within and outside China, including the Exhibition of New China Art at the Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, in 2000, and the Modern Ink Painting of Mainland China Exhibition in Taiwan, in 2003.

One of Hai Rihan's key preoccupations in invigorating traditional Chinese ink painting with the primal energies connected with the peoples and landscapes of Inner Mongolia. He seeks to energise the visual form with the raw strength and dynamism linked to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, an area historically seen as part of an unsophisticated periphery. His paintings include images of animals, which bring to mind proximity to nature as well as closeness to the origin of humankind. They are also filled with images of the subconscious world, not unlike those we see in dreams, suggesting the liberation of primeval instints - present in all human beings, but often suppressed by layers of rational self-restraint.