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An image of empty rooms with stained carpets and cracking furniture. A pair of hands emerging from the mass of twisted roots of an overturned tree. Lights from a city overlaid with digitally rendered forms to create an impossible scene. These are some of the enigmatic visions captured and created by Wenxin Zhang, whose work employs the juxtaposition of the surreal with the commonplace to interrogate the phantasmagoria that is memory.
As with many artists of her generation, Zhang’s work is an interrogation of her upbringing in what has been, for the past three decades, a quickly urbanizing Chinese landscape. In her works, the detachment from one’s own world is palpable, replaced instead by hyper-realism subsumed by mystery, fantasy and the encroachment of traces from a post-internet age. In much the same way that Susan Sontag described in her 1977 collection of essays On Photography, “a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask,” Zhang’s work traces that which is gone as well as that which may never had been. The results are dimly lit, often unreadable stages, often devoid of figures. Zhang enables her audience to get lost and, perhaps, find new and strange meanings in the worlds she presents.
In an interview with ArtAsiaPacific, Wenxin Zhang discusses how her art-making has developed in the past decade, evolving from a practice in photography, to writing, and now digital works that are online. Having recently returned to China after six years of living in the United States, she offers her perspective on this major decision and the ramifications it may have on the trajectory of her career.
What were your beginnings as an artist? What specifically led you to adopt photography as a medium?
I think photography is akin to travelling. You have to be somewhere to take photos. It’s a desire to explore something new, something you don’t know about. In a way, it’s also a form of voyeurism. Similarly, it’s also like writing, collecting other peoples’ stories. It’s the act of going outwards, capturing and obtaining things.
I think this began with my childhood experiences. My father always took me along with him on business trips to rural areas [of China]. While photography began later, it was during this time [when I was seven or eight years old] that the photographic way of thinking began.
Do you find yourself reproducing these images?
The project “Beast by the Waterfall Guesthouse” (2014–15) was a reproduction of this experience. This project also comes in the form of a book, which tells the story about traveling with my dad. This experience was the framework for this project.
WENXIN ZHANG, image from the “Beast by the Waterfall Guesthouse” series, 2014–15. Courtesy the artist.
Recently, I’ve noticed a shift in your work from mere documentation to an encroachment of surreal imagery. What prompted this change?
I think about this question a lot; why I am so attracted to escaping reality, even though I was there with the subject. I feel that my mind is always somewhere else, I always want that person or that place to bring me somewhere else. Maybe this also connects to not only me but also to my generation. We were the last generation to experience communism [in China].
When I was about five years old, the market system came back into China. The transition was abrupt and drastic. My generation encountered Western values, lifestyle and culture. As a result, we always have this longing for something else, something distant. We always grew up with foreign television and foreign music by people we never knew, in a language that we never knew. It’s kind of schizophrenic.
It’s weird, when Western viewers look at my photography, they think it looks real. But for people in China from my generation, they say it looks like their dreams.
WENXIN ZHANG, image from the “Beast by the Waterfall Guesthouse” series, 2014–15. Courtesy the artist.
I sense melancholy and distance between yourself and the subjects you present. Is this your intent?
I think this comes mainly from a desire of wanting to unearth something that doesn’t exist. I always wish that there is something else beneath the surface, another possibility, another side of the world or something under the surface of everyday life. Of course, I use a camera and I am an ordinary person, and when I take a photograph, I take images of places that exist, but I always have the desire of wanting to achieve something that may not be achievable. I really like to capture these moments that are very ambiguous. Because they are so ambiguous, you can imagine something that isn’t there. It’s kind of like a hallucination.
Do you have any points of inspiration—people, events, artists, writers, and moments from your experiences? From a visual perspective, what are your reference points?
My inspiration comes from all sources. I tend to avoid trying to get to know artists’ works that are similar to mine so as to avoid getting close to what they did. This is very attractive but dangerous for me. Most of my inspiration is from other mediums: writers of fiction and European movies.
When I was in high school, I used to watch hundreds of European films from pirated DVDs. While I didn’t really understand most of the movies because their contents were deep and philosophical, and not really meant for a 15-year-old, what I really connected with were the images, their appearance, color palette, and tone of the old film. In my images, there are many references to these European films. Theo Angelopoulos, Andrei Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci; their palettes are colder and the colors are distinctly their own. For example, Bertolucci’s colors are very saturated. That’s why, within my own projects, the palettes are all very different from each other.
WENXIN ZHANG, image from the “Polymorphic Expedition” photography series, 2015– . Courtesy the artist.
The photography series “Polymorphic Expedition” (2015– ) seems to be the most different of all the works that you have done. It seems to be the first instance when you allow the digital world to “bleed” into the image.
I started “Polymorphic Expedition” in late 2014 when I just got back [to China] from the United States. I worked on the piece for about six months and then dropped it for about a year and a half. But from late last year, I began to work on excerpts from an online project of the same name. It is kind of a continuation of the photo series, with a similar concept but a completely different presentation. It is a website-based work and a totally different form of media. While I believe that photographs are great, they have their own language and ways to express meaning. They cannot hold all the information that I want to put into them, nor can they fully express what I want them to. This was why I wanted to expand my visual vocabulary.
The concept of the project is one question: “What is reality and what is simulation?” Simulation is just another kind of reality and reality is just another kind of simulation. Human beings can also be fictional characters and fictional characters can be very realistic. For this reason, I think this approach to this project makes sense.
Was this shift a response to video games and/or post-internet art?
I grew up playing video games. I think many people in my generation played video games. I don’t feel that disconnected from this medium. However, I don’t believe that I am a post-internet artist. While I like many post-internet artists, I am not drawn to their aesthetics, nor am I good at using their kitschy elements.
WENXIN ZHANG, image from the “Polymorphic Expedition” photography series, 2015– . Courtesy the artist.
What do you think it will be like coming back to China, as a woman and as an artist (and as a woman artist)?
I think that being a woman is different from being a woman artist. Being a woman in China sucks. I am very lucky that my family doesn’t put any pressure on me. They don’t pressure me to get married or to have a less stable, wild lifestyle. But I certainly get pressure from other people.
People will tell you that you shouldn’t speak out, you shouldn’t say that sort of thing to a man. I have experienced this so many times that I feel as if I’m numb to it now. Many men don’t really realize that they are chauvinists and that they don’t see this as a problem. For this reason, they will never correct themselves. I think there is still a very long way to go, but things are slowly changing.
About three years ago, I felt like I was being discriminated as a woman artist. I had heard multiple male curators or art critics say things like, “Your work is too individualized.” Or, “Your work is too private.” They felt that “good” contemporary artwork needs to be related to the society, to the “big” topics, to topics that are “useful” and reflect the bloody reality. When you create art that reflects your own sensations, about your own world and about your own histories, they say that you are meaningless and that you are just a girl. They will never respect you, and they will give you no opportunity. I feel like this mentality still exists, but the environment has diversified. Now there are more opportunities for female artists.
Wenxin Zhang’s artwork can be found on her personal website.
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