Xia Zhang

Shelters V
digital print

I am a multi-disciplinary artist who works and wavers between ceramics, sculpture, photo, video, and performance to create visual representations of perceived and actual perceptions. In order to speak the truths that I know, I create work on how the world sees me and how I see my world. I waver between the representational and the abstract to convey a specific idea or experience. Having been an outsider wallflower my whole life, I spend a lot of time watching. I was transplanted from southern China at the young age of 6, grew up in suburban Maryland, and became an adult in Appalachia.  Learning to make has taught me lessons on failure and being brave. It gave me a voice that I can show people.

My work is everything that I want to say, but lack the words to do so. Instead, I can speak my mind with my best set of tools, my hands. I’ve always been a fidgety person, but now I can channel that anxiousness into objects of repetition. My work varies between my person