Home Sweet Home
I used a lot of cuttings in this project. It is a violent way of dealing with and relating to our domestic objects. Like the different forces that happen at home. I cut my ceramic cups so that they can embrace each other. People often get broken in relationships where and when they are trying to match with one another. I cut doors and fold them up; doors are normally used to be opened, but I see them as an object where people can hide themselves behind.
For me this need for intimacy stems from my mother who has never said that she loved me when I was growing up. I understood that she loved me, but I still wanted her to say it to me. My work is a result of this yearning for intimate feeling. For some of my works, I use different sorts of dust to cover objects. I feel that dust is like the unspoken part of a family. Sometimes if you do not speak up then emotions get lost in time, covered in dust until no one can recognize its shape anymore.I’m always so surprised by how easily the dust can change one space. I let the dust run away in the space, I want to show the power of dust.The more I moved the dust the more they belong to the space, the movement makes they alive.
This project is something I have been afraid to talk about for a long time, but since I have been working on it I am getting a better understanding of myself. I also realized that the desire for love and the difficulty to express it was not only happening to me as this insecurity was running through all the women in my family.The more I talk about this project, the weight of my emotions gets lighter, and so they are not like heavy stones on my shoulders anymore. I feel extremely lucky that I can speak out about my feelings, but not everyone has the same opportunities to do so. As conversations opened up around me, I found out that others were able to relate and I now understand I am not alone in this experience.
Yi Zhang (Wuhan, 1996) lives and works in Antwerp and Eindhoven.She graduated from Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp with the In-Situ prize in 2021, She won the Stockman’s Art Book Prize in 2019 and showed her works in Inbox, M HKA. Her work was also shown at West Bund Dome Shanghai and OCT Boxes Art Museum Shenzhen.
