Meet Jing Zhao, a talented photographer from China who has honed her craft through rigorous educational pursuits. Not only is she an expert in the field of photography, but she also holds a BA in Photography and an MFA in Photographic & Electronic Media.

Jing has worked with renowned organizations such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Chinese in America, where she has collaborated with professionals to produce stunning media and documentation of art.

With her natural talent and creative eye, she continues to produce stunning art that captivates viewers all around the world. . Jing is an artist to watch!

We are thrilled to welcome NY-based artist Jing Zhao for this exclusive interview, where she will be discussing her inspiring journey into photography and the amazing work that has followed it.

Jing Zhao. Image courtesy of the artist.

SAH: Please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.

JZ: My name is Jing Zhao. I am a photographer and a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. I often take my life experience as the subject of my artistic creation, trying to find answers to the philosophical questions of everyday life. My works also reacts to the current digital landscape and contemporary media, exploring how these forces impact our lives.

I was born in Shanghai in 1994 and achieved my Bachelor of Arts degree in Photography in 2016 at the China Academy of Art. I came to the United States in 2017 to develop my art career. Afterwards, I achieved an MFA in Photography & Electronic Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MS in Museums and Digital Culture from Pratt Institute.

My works were included in art exhibitions internationally, including:

• The Story of Finding Differences, OCAT Institute, Beijing, China, 2019

• Looking-Glass Self, The Gateway, Baltimore, MD, 2018

• Mirror, Cardinal Space, Baltimore, MD, 2018

• ABC Book Fair, Shanghai 21st Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2016

I was also engaged in art organizations such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Chinese in America, and the Anthology Film Archives, allowing me to work in media production, art documentation, and curation. Having learned and practised industrial methodologies and technologies, I plan to employ these approaches throughout my artistic career and help art institutions fulfill their missions to provide access to knowledge.

SAH: Can you use 3 words to describe your work?

JZ: Intimate, Surreal, Touching.

SAH: What inspired you to pursue a career in art?

I was born under the one-child policy [1] in China. I grew up in an environment where the first generation of China emphasized individuality so much, without the challenge of sibling rivalries. Also, the advantages afforded by the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s meant that kids like me grew up with boundless opportunities and ever-increasing resources.

When I was a teenager, my after-school life was filled with cartoons, comics, video games, and imported music albums. Among my countless hobbies, the shoujo manga 2 was one of my few passions. The delicate psychological descriptions and monologues of each character in shoujo manga have resonated deeply with me.

The impact of the one-child policy, foreign cultures, and the enthusiasm for shoujo manga all made me pay too much attention to myself, my appearance, and my spiritual world. Naturally, those influences also triggered my interest in expressing myself through creating works of art. My artistic career started from there.

[1] The term one-child policy refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country’s population growth by restricting many families to a single child.

[2] Shoujo manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent females and young adult women.

SAH: Could you tell me more about the surreal yet touching scenarios you create through photography, video, and sound?

JZ: Each of my works carries an autobiographical nature. But, they are not as direct as diaries, which mainly tell the representational subjects, such as date, place, and event. Instead, I always focus on how to visualize the invisible part and the spiritual side. My works are like magnifying glasses that abstractly magnify an emotion or thought that I experienced and commonly experienced by others. That is why I call my works’ surreal yet touching scenarios.’

Although I was trained as a photographer, my research-based practice is rooted in the tradition of conceptual art [3].
As a result, each of my works is exhibited in a unique form. Some of them are multimedia installations consisting of photography, video, sound, text, drawings, and ready-made objects. Each element’s exact purpose of serving forms the scenarios I initially imagined.

[3] Conceptual art is art for which the idea behind the work is more important than the finished art object. Conceptual art emphasizes that artists work with meaning, not with forms or colors. Those are put in play to construct meaning.

SAH: Are there any techniques or approaches that are unique to your artwork?

JZ: I often use comparison when displaying my work. For example, in 2016, I carried out an art project — “2202,” with my photographer friend Yanjun Li. In this work, my photos and hers are parallelly placed, forming a dialog, recalling the memories of us when living together in an apartment named 2202 in Hangzhou, China. In many of my other works, you also can detect this technique. I think it is the major approach that makes my work special.

Jing Zhao & Yanjun Li. Installation view. 2202.

SAH: What influences, both internal and external, have had the greatest impact on the development of your art?

JZ: While creating art, I often asked myself, “Why am I so self-centered.” Occasionally, during research, I saw a nice quote:

“......Perhaps the most simple way into a culture and into an age is to ask: What do people worship? People have worshipped so many different things, the sun, the stars, the storm. Some people worship many gods, some one, some none.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, people worshipped the nation, the Aryan race, and the communist state. What do we worship? I think future anthropologists will take a look at the books we read on self-help, self-realization, and self-esteem. They will look at the way we talk about morality as being true to oneself, the way we talk about politics, as a matter of individual rights, and they will look at this wonderful new religious ritual we have created. Called the “selfie”.

And I think they’ll conclude that what we worship in our time is the self, the me, the I……” (Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, How we can face the future without fear together, TED Talk published on July, 2017)

This speech may be too general. But it greatly influenced my practice afterwards and pointed out that “narcissism” is an exciting and relevant subject to dig deeper into.

SAH: How do you think digital media is impacting the cultural diaspora and creating ideological transformations today?

JZ: Based on my understanding, the cultural diaspora in the digital age is caused by globalization, mass immigration, postmodernism, and the fast-paced nature of digital media. They have led to the dissolution of metanarrative and the fragmentation of information. Histories and cultures are constantly distorted, entertained, and symbolized under the influence of accelerated information circulation.

The filters of search engines, the algorithms of social media, the regional news……
They all make us almost completely surrounded by people whose views, opinions, and prejudices are just like us.
People like ourselves surround us, and we would become more and more extreme. This phenomenon is what I considered the change of ideology today impacted by digital media.

As long as I was researching this topic in 2018, and I started to produce my multimedia project Looking-Glass Self, which includes five independent artworks:

• I’m not

• Journey Round, Midnight Vortex

• 7:25

• Look! I’m Walking!

• Jing Zhao’s Story

— In the video work Journey Round, I used video clips of popular movies to visualize the scenes in my mind when I sang the song Journey Round.

— In the e-book Jing Zhao’s Story, I collected the news that Zhihu recommended me to read based on my browsing history.

— The sculpture — I’m not, recorded my actions of constantly writing, I’m not...on the mirror. Each... represents an identity I hold.

— Hundreds of….., formed my figure of myself. July 25th is my birthday.

— In the video work 7:25, I used an iPhone to display all the screenshots I took on my iPhone at 7:25.

— In the multi-screen video, Look! I’m Walking! I showed many videos I took while walking at different places and times.

Throughout the series of works, I intended to use my daily life fragments as samples to reflect the complicated phenomenons I discussed above and explore how these forces impact an individual’s mind, body, and value.

Jing Zhao. Installation view. I’m not.

Jing Zhao. Installation view. Journey Round. 

SAH: Could you explain what drove you to weave fictional and autobiographical narratives into your works?

JZ: I see my works are autobiographical since I used to embed lots of my private experiences into the content, especially in the early stage of my art practice. My photography series Farewell was created in 2015 after I exited a romantic relationship.

In this work, I sorted out old photographs containing objects that used to belong to my lover and compared the ‘ex’ object with their ‘current’ look in a trash bin. For me, it was a ritual and a funeral. The shredded objects, raindrops, and the orange colour of the trash bin allude to my turbulent emotions beneath the calm surface.

In another work, I created — From Langjun to Fangjia Fan, I used a laser pointer to illuminate the straight-line distance between my new and old apartment. At the same time, I rode on a bike, crossed the winding roads and streets, and rode towards the old apartment. The whole process was to remember the feeling of displacement and memorialize the bond between my old friends and me.

Jing Zhao. Video still. From Langjun to Fangjia Fan.

The two works are like scalpels, cutting open my wounds and challenging my tolerance of exposing privacy in artistic creation. In my later practices, I learned to create a ‘real’ feeling while blurring the directivity of the presentations to protect my subjective intentions. At that point, the ‘fictional narratives’ came into place. My work Midnight Vortex is a representative attempt during this transition.

This work consists of travel photographs I took in different places, dreams I remembered when I woke up, illustrations I created based on both and mysterious sounds, weaving intertextual narratives, and waiting for the audience to detect the clues.

For the text of dreams in this work, I regard them as ‘fiction’ that was automatically produced by my subconscious when I was sleeping. The installation intends to explore the complex relations between viewing, imagination, cities, and memory. By slowly investigating this work, the audiences can experience a comprehensive navigation of body, heart, and spirit, from the preconscious to the subconscious and then to the superconscious — the three conscious behaviors in psychology.

SAH: As an artist based in New York, how has the city shaped your artistic development?

JZ: As a Chinese artist who currently resides in New York, I sense that the city has the most diverse population in the World - every race, gender, and religion with cultural histories and artistic traditions are interwoven into astonishing forms of intercultural expression.

This makes it challenging to create, reasoning that I have to consider my identity so much every time I start a new project. Also, I have to make sure my works bridge multi- cultural ‘differences’ as well as reflect the state of my provenance in its immediacy and complexity.

Meanwhile, this makes it attractive to create since the city allows me to reach more international viewers. I received many insightful comments when showing my work “Midnight Vortex” to New York audiences, which was created after I came to the United States. The process of exchanging ideas is enriching and inspiring to me.

SAH: What would be your advice to emerging artists who are looking to explore similar themes in their own work?

JZ: I would like to suggest artists who explore similar themes document and keep everything that could be relevant to their artistic creation. Keep building your private archive that stores every idea across your mind, every pattern you draw on your notebook, every screenshot you take, etc. They are likely to be helpful in your future projects.

Secondly, when you are running out of ideas or feeling stuck, try to research more on the subjects that interest you. It often could open the door to a brand new world for you. The last piece of advice is that don’t be shy to share your art-making process with your friends. Frequently look backward to assess your previous works and find connections between them. Participate in interviews. Think about how to give a talk in front of strangers or people who are not working in the art field. You can get valuable feedback and gradually improve your ability to think independently and dialectically.

SAH: Where can people view your work?

JZ: My online portfolio is located at https://www.zhaojing.asia/. People also can view my works on my Instagram account: @jaynechao

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