On Friday, September 21st, I attended a visiting artist lecture hosted by Xiaohong Zhang describing her life as an artist and the works in the exhibition that opened that night at Lawrence University. Ironically, I had also been specifically assigned to attend this lecture as a part of my job at the Lawrentian to photograph the event.
The works of Xiaohong Zhang are heavily influenced by her interest in Soviet realism. Many of her pieces are politically charged, specifically in respects to consumerism, the environment, and work ethics. Her Chinese heritage influences her art in many ways, from using the medium of traditional paper cutting to the political issues she chooses to feature in her work. For example, she made a piece that talks about Chairman Mao as being a communist symbol, and she also me a piece about the conflict between China and the United States. The aspect of her lecture that interested me the most was when she illustrated how she spoke about the environment through her work. She often features tree motifs in her paper cutting work. One thing that really fascinated me was how in her landscapes, she replaced trees with cranes. She did this not only in her paper cutting, but also her digital paintings, and 3D digital works. Zhang spoke about something that heavily relates to what we are learning in “New Media,” which is her viewpoint on the mediums she chooses. She uses new and contemporary tools and skills which keeps her work relevant to today’s audience while still referencing traditional Chinese art forms. She described mediums and tools that enhance her ability to communicate and make her work more modern. Her ability to adapt to the modern era relates to the McLuhan quote, “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments” (Media is the Massage 26). Her intuition as to which modern mediums to employ shows brilliance on her part as an artist, as a contemporary audience will best receive a contemporary message.
Her website:
http://www.xiaohongzhang.com/index.html
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| Xiaohong Zhang |
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| Student engaged with her work featured at Wriston |
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| Example of her paper cutting, "Brave New World" |
I thought the crane/tree thing was really interesting too! I thought those were among some of the most powerful of her works for me. And you point out the commentary on consumerism, which was also a big part of it. I like your photos too :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, the cranes replacing trees motif is really strong and really emphasizes how much today's leaders are destroying Earth's landscape.
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