Zikai Zhang

About

Working primarily in painting, photography, and installation, and deeply influenced by his personal experiences and Eastern cultural background, Zikai explores themes of cultural experience, belonging, nostalgia for home, and the transcendence of traditional boundaries through art forms.

<ROAD>，2024

Instead of the traditional brush and ink, Zikai uses photographs of British tarmac pavements beneath his feet as an element of his work, which fits well with his creative philosophy and values. The familiarity of the tarmac and gravel road, a specific path he takes every day in his neighborhood to get home, has become an important and comforting element of life abroad. It is here that he is often lost in thought, his eyes fixed on the ground, reflecting on the stark contrast between the current state of his life and that of his homeland. Zikai’s artistic approach aims to infuse the medium of photography with profound subjectivity. The earth, as the basis for both literal and metaphorical meanings, becomes a canvas for documenting the author’s journey, embodying his real-life experience of being in different places. The project seeks to combine these photographic footprints with the practice of calligraphy and painting, in which the artist has been involved since childhood. The traditional Chinese ink art, filled with a sense of belonging and security, interacts with these modern imagery to create a complex presentation of cultural dialog. It is also his current response to interculturalism.