Zhidong Zhang plays with balloons
Photographer and public installation artist stretches the boundaries of form
Photographer Zhidong Zhang describes their work as “slippery.” Zhang’s photo-based sculpture “far Away, from Home” marks the Year of the Dragon on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. featuring a household display cabinet inspired by one in the artist’s parents’ house in Hunan, China, it’s filled with backlit photos of twisted balloon forms emblazoned with dragon tattoos. the piece slips between private and public, child’s play and adult body art, photography and sculpture, home and away.
the cabinet has empty shelves. “I’m interested to see what people put there,” Zhang said.
where to find them: zhidongzhang.com
age: 27
Making a living: Zhang’s livelihood includes commissions and residencies (they’re a resident artist at the Boston Center for the Arts), plus they teach at the school of the Museum of fine Arts at tufts University and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
originally from: Hunan, China where they live: Belmont
studio: Zhang’s studio houses some of their beloved real and artificial plants, a sofa to nap on, and previous works: photos large and small; prints of family snapshots, folded into heartshaped origami tiles.
How they started: their father gave them a camera when they went to college to study math at Hunan’s Central south University.
“He said, ‘oh, you can do whatever you want, but just don’t make it your profession,’” Zhang said. In 2018, the artist came to the United states to pursue a graduate degree in photography at MassArt.
what they make: “I started with making traditional portraits, traditional still lifes, and then working with collage and working with assemblage. I am being very playful with [photography] and introducing other things into that medium to stretch it in different ways.”
How they work: odd props pop up around Zhang’s studio: a giant rubber duck, a pack of orange life jackets the artist found on the street. they enjoy the world-building aspect of photography.
“I love going to thrift stores to find random things. Most of them have to sit in my studio for a long time until I know how to collaborate with them. that’s something similar to when I work with people. We have to have a relationship to be working together.”
their equipment? Cameras include an eight-by-ten, a four-by-five, and a digital camera.
“they are all just tools for making.”
advice for artists: stick your neck out.
“I constantly give myself permission to be vulnerable with myself. With the process, with the mediums that I work with, and with the subjects that I delve into.”