Yuqing Zhu
Yuqing Zhu grew up between Southern Mongolia, coastal China, and the California hills. Their artistic journey began at the age of 5, when their grandma taught them how to create collages out of paper and fabric scraps around the house. Zhu most recently called Chicago home but is currently residing in Los Angeles, CA and spends their time between visual art and working as a professor in the Neuroscience Department at Pomona College.
The things which connect us to our past can sometimes be as distant as the past itself. So Zhu turned to the things they had - a heritage of steppes and life on horseback became an obsession with Western films, a desire for richly embroidered traditional garments became a collection of wrapping papers, half-remembered Gobi dunes became road trips in the Mojave, and the divides at home became a community of queer friends, each with their own pasts and dreams. These are the elements and characters in Zhu's collages, in which East shakes out the West, colors and patterns are piled high, and the stories of today are combined with fables from centuries ago. Zhu's pieces are homages to taking all that we can, leaving the rest, and embarking on the lifelong act of assembling our truest selves. "Much of my work in both art and science is inspired by literature. Juan Rulfo, Roberto Bolaño, and Kurt Vonnegut are my favorite writers." - Zhu
Yuqing Zhu grew up between Southern Mongolia, coastal China, and the California hills. Their artistic journey began at the age of 5, when their grandma taught them how to create collages out of paper and fabric scraps around the house. Zhu most recently called Chicago home but is currently residing in Los Angeles, CA and spends their time between visual art and working as a professor in the Neuroscience Department at Pomona College.
The things which connect us to our past can sometimes be as distant as the past itself. So Zhu turned to the things they had - a heritage of steppes and life on horseback became an obsession with Western films, a desire for richly embroidered traditional garments became a collection of wrapping papers, half-remembered Gobi dunes became road trips in the Mojave, and the divides at home became a community of queer friends, each with their own pasts and dreams. These are the elements and characters in Zhu's collages, in which East shakes out the West, colors and patterns are piled high, and the stories of today are combined with fables from centuries ago. Zhu's pieces are homages to taking all that we can, leaving the rest, and embarking on the lifelong act of assembling our truest selves. "Much of my work in both art and science is inspired by literature. Juan Rulfo, Roberto Bolaño, and Kurt Vonnegut are my favorite writers." - Zhu
contact us with inquiries on available works
|
|