Shot at the Empty Sky Memorial, New Jersey, 2022, by XIN Shun
ZHANG Zhao (张钊, 1996) is an artist, whose main medium is performance. Zhao was born in a small town east of Xuzhou, one commonplace deeply embedded in China's Zhongyuan (Central Plains) Culture. Using his daily life, social identity, and context of China as a starting point, he accuses Disciplinary Power and reflects on the truth of human beings' social life. He often deliberately blends absurdity and implied fatalistic tragedy into calm fixed shots and unnoticeable performances in his works as a metaphor for the silence and powerless individuals who are the price of historical processes.
In 2020, after the outbreak of Covid-19, Zhao joined the Grass Stage to develop a collective theatre work based on the historical experience and lived reality of the pandemic and quarantine. Returning hometown in northern Jiangsu (Subei) from New York in late 2022, he began attempting to explore the relationship between indigenous folk art and disasters of the lower Yellow River and Huai River system in a longer time dimension and broader ecological spectrum, focusing on the floods and famines that have plagued his hometown for centuries, and the changes in regional social structure and folk culture under tremendous ecological transformations, as well as the changes in the ecological niches other than humans' in the Yellow River floodplain species cluster.
Selected Group Exhibitions:
ONE, Chi K11 Museum, 300 Middle Huaihai Road, Shanghai, 2024
No Choice but to Respect, Zhi Art Space, B131 Huxi Commune, Chongqing, 2023
Texture of This Time, Sky Garden Gallery, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank HQs Building, Beijing, 2023
An Intimate Process of Strangeness, LuckyPot, 34 Grove Park Road, London, 2023
OUTRO, SVA Chelsea Gallery, New York, 2022
Incredibly Frustrated, COOLING GALLERY, Nanjing, 2022
Image & Connection—The 3rd 1839 Photography Award Exhibition, Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum, Chengdu, 2021
The Nature of Things, SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, 2021
Pivot Culture, by R-Lab Curating (The University of Edinburgh), Online, 2021
Curatorial Projects:
Sweating Like a Pig, Monday Space, Xi’an, 2024
The Butterfly Breaks the Myths, Xuzhou, 2023
Messy Code, Luojiazhai, Xi'an, 2020
Evolution Chapter II, Unit 5 "Hello?", Enjoy • Art Museum, Beijing, 2020
Talks:
Art Practices under the Postponement, The 4th Season of "Living Water" Art Talk Series, 2022
Awards:
The 3rd 1839 Photography Awards, Excellence Award (Top 11 in 1000+ ), 2021
"NON-INTERVENTION" Wuxiang Mountain Tourism Public Earth Art Competition, Finalist Award (Top 36 in 721, International), 2019
Education:
BFA Costume Design, Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, 2016-2020
MFA Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, 2020-2022