Water Elemental
Name/Title
Water ElementalEntry/Object ID
HUM-2023-00006Description
This series of five photographs was originally exhibited in large format (40 x 50 in.) as part of Shellie Zhang’s 2023 solo exhibition Elemental at Patel Brown Gallery, Toronto. Elemental is of a body of work that includes photography, installation, and sculpture pieces that examine the simulacrum of nature in interior spaces and its intersection with current and historical trends that reference facets of East Asian philosophy, design, and places. The series continues Zhang’s exploration into how replicas, imitations, and simulations of homelands and cultural symbols transform as a visual language unique to diasporic experience. The photographs depict arrangements of the five Chinese wuxing phases (earth, water, wood, metal, and fire) in the form of household objects and items found in Zhang’s new neighbourhood that she moved to during the pandemic. The series is a presentation of Zhang’s attempts to get acquainted with new surroundings, working with the elemental agents of change, and incorporating principles of feng shui as a practice of agency and intention. As immigration and human migration grow, and generations of communities become further removed from their motherland, new visual languages and practices manifest from the diaspora’s desire to be connected to their ancestral culture in domestic spaces. In these instances, homes become sanctuaries to practice and develop rituals and autonomy from the social and environmental hostilities. Elemental is a study of what spatial depictions, imported goods and commercialized presentations imprint about lands far away, and how copies of the real accrue layers of meaning and are reinterpreted to become truth. – Excerpt from text on shelliezhang.comArtwork Details
Medium
Archival Inkjet PrintCollection
Permanent CollectionCategory
Print