ARTIST STATEMENT
Throughout my life, my environment has shifted from nation to nation, city to city, and culture to culture. Whether as an undesired female in my culture or racial other in my environment, I always feel displaced as a subcultural exile within the dominant power structures. Under this surface of water, what only remains approachable and retained by myself is my own cast of mind. My works aim to explore these hidden emotional and psychological interiors through painting, soft sculpture, or performance, capturing inner worlds shaped by memory, domesticity, and cultures. The works I’ve submitted for this exhibition examine different angles of self-discovery on vulnerability—from a sleeping figure cocooned in soft, swirling textures, to a dynamic gathering of abstracted bodies in motion, to a miniature soft space enclosed in a leather, black camera. Inside the leathered camera, the contrast with a stereotypical feminine doll room blurs the line of viewership and raises the question of whether the audience imposes authority on this miniature, or if this camera is casting the space we inhabit within itself. Despite their material and stylistic differences, these stationary pieces are all reflecting upon my action and inaction to the environment. What is the limit of our control on reality or we are merely a product of it? I play with conflicting materiality and representation, weaving these symbolisms into the discomforts we often ignore.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Huiqi Zhou (b. 2006, Shenzhen, China) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, working across painting, fiber, and performance. She is a daughter, a sister, an immigrant, and more, because her identities are continuously shifting under the weight of cultural and ideological conditioning. Growing up between China and the United States while still within patriarchal structures, Zhou embraces both insecurity and resilience in her practice, foregrounding subjectivity and passivity through the contrast of materiality. Her works are usually sugar-coated with pastel palettes and soft textures, yet resist narrating their surface. Zhou’s practice reflects on cultural displacement and personal intimacy, and she is currently exploring her own definitions of femininity. Zhou studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under the Scholar Program, pursuing a BFA in Studio, and has exhibited and performed in student showcases at SAIC.
© Huiqi Zhou