Yiwei Gallery is pleased to present the American debut exhibition of Oakland-based Chinese artist Zhang Mengjiao. This exhibition includes two latest photography series from Zhang, Flat Power, and We Don’t Speak the Same Language, along with a unique sound installation. 

Investigating how beauty was portrayed in traditional Chinese archives, and how it is conceived in Chinese social media today because of globalization, Zhang realizes that the gaze and constraint on women have remained the same. In Flat Power, Zhang makes masks from materials that represent the idea of beauty and transforms this performance into a 2D photograph.  By presenting beauty as a constructed idea, she asks the question of how one can subvert the dominant discourse. 

Brought back to a zoo by her childhood nostalgia, Zhang did not feel the same about these idealized human-constructed habitats for animals anymore. In We Don’t Speak the Same Language, Zhang turns the lens to the artificial landscapes in a zoo and explores deeper how artifice emerges from a photographic process.

Zhang Mengjiao received her MFA degree from San Francisco Art Institute in 2020. She works with photography, sculptural installation, and performance video. Zhang’s practice often looks inward at her own identity as a woman of color, Chinese immigrant,  artist, and human, and outward at social issues. 

Yiwei Gallery Presents
For the Sake of…the Artifice!
June 18 - July 3, 2021

Curated by Yiwei Lu

Kylin Gallery
8634 Wilshire Blvd,
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

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For inquiries, please contact YiweiGallery@gmail.com