Drawing from her experience as a ‘third culture kid’, Chinese–Australian artist Louise Zhang reconciles her Chinese and Western identities through an interplay of cross-cultural symbolism. Using a colour palette of sugary pastels, in her painting, sculpture and installations Zhang constructs fantastical landscapes and amorphic sculptures which create simultaneous abject horror and delight. These works draw upon the visual language of Western horror cinema and Chinese mythology and culture to explore the space between the attractive and repulsive and create new forms of meaning.

In 2016 Zhang undertook residencies in China with the idea to understand the different expressions of horror in Chinese culture. Zhang explains:

In mainland China, contemporary supernatural expression, such as body horror in film, is supressed by censorship. Despite this, Zhang discovered for herself the purgatory known in Chinese as Diyu, or the ‘realm of the dead’ in Chinese mythology. This ‘hell’ is loosely based on Chinese beliefs about the afterlife and is typically represented as a subterranean maze with various levels and chambers. Zhang explains her interpretation of this complex Chinese underworld:

Zhang expresses this preoccupation with rupturing Chinese and Western symbolism using a highly distinctive palette of sweet pastel pinks, blues, purples, and greens, stating ‘colour is just important for me as the medium itself.’[iii] Her paintings have a figurative quality and maintain an uncomfortable familiarity. Her works often feature amorphic forms, burning suns, explosive clouds, enormous flowers and swathes of colour, which slowly drip down. Many of these forms embody a duality of meaning, such as the rising red sun. Zhang first saw a red sun rising in the sky while visiting family in China in 2016, describing it as ‘apocalyptic … but in China, it is seen as beautiful and sublime.’[iv] The titles of her work extend this notion of seductive horror as seen in Skeleton romance 2019, Feel my bones crack in your arms 2019 and Happy death 2019.

Zhang’s work The pure land 2018 in the UNSW Art Collection draws on these cultural influences, conflating their meanings and offering new ideas and perspectives. She has depicted visceral blob forms in pink, opaque chalky green and soft lilac with floral forms like chrysanthemums overlayed across the surface of the work, the composition grounded by two circular shapes which echo the sun and the moon. These misshapen objects fall in and over one another with a sense of amorphic, autonomous energy, suspended in middle of the pictorial plane. This use of colour and form strategically seduces viewers enough to create a sense of unsettled curiosity, and through that process unravels preconceptions and exposes new or different ideas, ones which break free from prescribed cultural meanings.

Zhang was born in Sydney and is a recent graduate of UNSW, completing a Master of Fine Arts (Research) at UNSW Art & Design in 2016. Although an artist at the beginning of her career, she has exhibited widely in Sydney and regional New South Wales and undertaken large scale projects with critical success. In 2016 she undertook an Australia Council residency at the Institute of Provocation, Beijing, China. She was a finalist in the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship in 2017 and awarded the Fisher's Ghost Art Award – Sculpture category, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney in 2015. In 2019 Zhang was commissioned to create a public artwork as part of the UNSW Library Alumni Mural Program.

RESOURCES 

Louise Zhang | artist website

UNSW Library Alumni Mural Program: Louise Zhang | UNSW Library video