Artist Talk Reflection: Xiaohong Zhang

Xiaohong Zhang's presentation, "Traversing medium and re-appropriating motifs in contemporary art" outlined the artist's personal inspiration and growth as a political artist and introduced the ways in which she makes use of multiple media to convey her messages. Zhang highlighted artists such as Zhao Wuji and Kara Walker in her talk, having developed her own style through a combination of sorts between Zhao's east-meets-west traditional style and Walker's tableaux paper cuttings. Zhang's own artwork mixes digital, 3-dimensional and physical media to put forth striking political messages. One of these included a beautifully complex series of paper cuttings depicting various family members preparing for school with their loved ones.

http://xiaohongzhang.com/3lastkiss.html

When looked at closer, newspaper clippings from around the world describing the atrocity of the Sandy Hook shooting can be seen pasted across the bodies of the family members. Taken into context with the work's title, "Last Kiss," this piece is a jarring reminder of the horrific loss of human life due to America's rampant gun violence. This work was just one of many examples in which Zhang makes use of both language and imagery to convey a message. McLuhan says, "the method of our time is to use not a single but multiple models for exploration," which Zhang certainly achieves through re-using traditional motifs in her work which often serve to starkly juxtapose western or current styles in order to point out the conflicts of this modern age. Zhang's presentation also touched again on the McLuhan quote which I spoke about in my previous blog post- by combining the traditional styles of different cultures as well as through exploring the use of multiple media, Zhang interposes elements which create thought provoking materials.