Zichun Zhao

Art History major

My practice mainly consists of painting and keeping a sketchbook. I make mostly figurative and narrative paintings that reflect on the themes of embodiment and alienation. In my sketchbook, I’m interested in the symbolic significance of quotidian scenes.

Flight | 若是长久 (If this feeling could last) | I've been used and discarded 10 times | Limit 

acrylic on canvas

Jewett Gallery and Jewett Hallway Galleries

In the recent paintings, I used the techniques of layering and fracturing to manipulate the figures’ relationship with their surroundings and other materials. Bodies morph into metal, stone, or glass. My works reflect on embodiment and alienation and allude to strange bodies in fiction like cyborgs, ghosts, and hybrids. I initially developed this way of painting while thinking about the violence and alienation these bodies experience in a heteronormative and capitalist society (I paint bodies with hard skin). I think these bodies can enable alternative ways of connection and sources of strength. But these connections are often further complicated by a lack of certainty, or the pressure to avoid implicit punishment and compete for limited opportunities.

An important influence for me is Donna Haraway’s cyborg, a hybrid of machine and organism. Reacting to contemporary gendered violence, I’m drawn to the cyborg’s capability to be disassembled and reassembled, therefore surviving dramatic changes to its body. My recent projects specifically allude to writings by the Taiwanese author Qiu Miaojin and science fiction by Xia Jia. In Qiu’s Notes of a Crocodile, the narrator likens being a lesbian in a homophobic environment to being a crocodile among humans in crocodile suits. Xia Jia’s short story, “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight,” is a sci-fi rewrite of the Qing-dynasty tale of Nie Xiaoqian, a female ghost who becomes human through marriage and childbirth. The description of ambiguous bodies in these stories are especially interesting to paint.

sketchbook

multimedia on paper

to see more work by Zichun:  @zichun_zz

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