Elemental, 2023

Earth Elemental, Water Elemental, Wood Elemental, Metal Elemental, Fire Elemental
40 x 50”
20 x 25”
Archival Inkjet Print

Elemental consists of a body of work with 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.

An emergent desire for reminders of the natural elements in our living space materialized in simulated forms as urban centers continue to grow while living spaces shrink, and as consumers become more conscientious of what we surround ourselves with while being further removed from nature. From 2020 to 2022, paint companies dubbed earth tones and shades of blue and green with names such as “Back to Nature, “Brave Ground”, “Canon Dusk” and “Evergreen Fog” as the colours of the year. The popularity of these colours during the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic may in part be due to their associative qualities with healing, tranquility, hope, stability, optimism, harmony, and a longing to feel close to nature at a time when the world was locked indoors.

Similarly, 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 in their own right.

This series of five photographs depicts 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.

Installation Photos by Darren Rigo.

This project was made possible with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Superframe Framing Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council’s Career Catalyst Grant.