A Poignant Conversation with Zhaozaho Wang

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist

Zhaozaho Wang is a Chinese artist, who was born and raised in Shanghai, China. She currently is based in Detroit, Michigan. Zhaozaho came to the US in 2011 and received her BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her art focuses on surreal dreamscapes that cope with and illustrate mental illness, existential crises, trauma, and personality disorders. Wang's art has been shown in galleries such as the Wasserman Projects, the Woman Made Gallery, and online exhibitions held by Artsy. Her work has been featured in publications such as the New American Paintings,  and Create. She was also a resident fellow at ACRE Projects Summer Residency. I had the pleasure and honor of asking Zhaozaho how her art relates to childhood and mental illness, what brought her to focus on surreal dreamscapes, and what is the most important reason why she creates art.

UZOMAH: What do find is the most important thing in maintaining the innocence found in childhood in your art?

ZHAOZHAO: I think the most significant thing is being honest, being honest to my emotions and what I have gone through even they will expose my vulnerable, sentimental and distressed side in my work. I couldn't fully understand many things that happened back in childhood and how they had shaped and manipulated my personality until much older. With the adult me still trapped in the past, I would still like to restate and recur those memories and correlated sentiments through the lenses of children's eyes and bodies, without any camouflage from an adult soul. Only in this way will it be possible for me to truly understand and possibly reconcile with the past through my artwork. As a result, often as the only human protagonist, the little girl directly refers to my old photos from childhood. It is also a bond that strengthens the relationship between myself and the paintings.

"You Don't Like It?", Oil on Canvas, 40" × 50", 2019

U: How does your art relate to your childhood and mental illness?

Z: My art is about childhood trauma and how these traumatic experiences accumulated and aggravated mental illness and personality disorders. Unfortunately, I could not think of any fondest moments from childhood that relate to my current art practice.

It, Oil on Canvas, 80" × 64", 2020-2021

U: How do you use art to explore issues such as mental illness, trauma, and personality disorders?

Z: I inject my paintings with self-portraiture, anthropomorphic animals, fractured bodies, and other allegoric signifiers in surreal dreamscapes highlighted with theatrical lighting and a limited color palette. The uncanny juxtapositions aim to create autobiographic imagery that imitates the distressed and tumbledown stages of mental illness, trauma, and personality disorders. By doing so, I intend to evoke some thoughts, questions, and conjectures of the possible narratives from the audience. In one of my paintings, "You Don't Like It?", I depicted a little girl sitting between two giant octopi whose glistening and wet tentacles sprawl out in a domestic space. Surrounded by those larger-than-life tentacles, the little girl appears to be accustomed to this situation that playing Jenga is more urgent than questioning the surroundings; nevertheless, her complicated expression indicates that something perturbed and disconcerting is going on in this abnormal circumstance. One of the octopus's tentacles is positioned between her legs and disappears under her skirt. Why is she not reacting to that? She seizes the string of tension tighter as she tries to pull a block out of the Jenga tower that has already been stacked up so high. Is the tower going to fall and break this weird and disquieting vibe? What is the relationship between the two octopi and the little girl? What is happening with that tentacle that is going between her legs? I hope the audience will find their answers to those questions and fit together the puzzle pieces.

It is challenging when using paint to construct intangible memories, experiences, and emotions, especially those that are difficult enough to express orally. With symbols, representations, metaphors, and coded narratives, I am aiming for an open-ended as well as guided experience for the audience. The grotesque scenario composes a labyrinth, while the interrelationships among each component in the painting will guide viewers to pursue the threads and find their answers. 

As Above, So Below, Oil on Canvas 30" × 48", 2019

U: How do you think using art to address pressing issues in mental health can help open more to discussing these issues affecting so many?

Z: I am a person that feels it difficult to verbalize my mental issues in public spaces. Especially in the current social media-dominated environment, the propaganda and oversell of idealized life is an invisible hand that could potentially deteriorate the isolation between people with mental illness and the rest of the world. People tend to only talk about good and cheerful things and try hard to mold and maintain an image of perfect life in public because many of us don't want to be looked a trace of misery in the eyes of others. I think not just me, but many people have asked themselves why everyone around them seems to have a perfectly satisfying and successful life. Thus to not be looked at any differently, many of us hide our true self even deeper, which has caused more anxious and depressed thoughts. However, I think pain is valuable, and trauma does not make us inferior to other people. Confronting, accepting, and admitting our pain will not make us weaker than any other people, but make us a complete person and give us the chance to reconcile with our pain. Art is a perfect go-between that will gently and softly string the resonant souls and evoke people to empathize with the difference and uniqueness of each person. I want to talk about trauma, mental illness, personality disorders, and those distressed, lonely thoughts because I know there will at least be one person out there who will resonant and realize they are not the only one who has experienced these or thought in this way and that is vital enough to have more artwork about these out there in the world.

Untitled(Self-portrait), Oil on Canvas Mounted on Wood Panel, 16" × 12", 2021

U: What brought you to focus on surreal dreamscapes?

Z: In my opinion, the estrangement between people who have mental illnesses with the rest of the world is the incoherence and dissonance of their mental cognition. Instead of sanely and objectively viewing the world with their physical cognition, which represents the social reality and the truth a body goes through, people comply with the overpowering mental cognition. Inevitably, as mental cognition separates itself from physical cognition, it creates a logic system in an alternate reality that the brain would rather accept and receive as the truth. Thus people with mental illness perceive and process the information through a layer of filtration to comprise their mental status. Often, the information could end up being twisted into an unpredictable level. This discordance between cognitions is undeniably the consequence of escapism from the real world caused by mental illness, existential crisis, personality disorder, and trauma, thus inducing confrontation between outer and inner space. As the antagonism sharpened, this disorientation between physiological space and physical space ultimately generated a psychedelic dreamscape that fuzzed up the broader between reality and unreality. With all these in mind, I define my paintings as the stage for a bubble world that overlaps with external and internal states, consciousness, and unconsciousness. In my paintings, I am constantly asking these questions: what is real?', 'what is unreal?', 'which side should I perceive and believe?' Surreal dreamscapes are a great way to reflect the world that deceives, confuses, questions, and destabilizes our perception foothold, imitating mental illness's tumbledown and insecure condition.

U: Where do you see yourself and your art in the next few years?

Z: My art practice is closely correlated with my mental stage. I am not sure how my art will be if I live without mental illness and personality disorders one day. Nevertheless, I will constantly explore different ways to transfer unutterable experiences and memories into painting languages. I am looking forward to seeing how my painting will change me and vice versa. Maybe one day, my painting will be about not just the past and present but also the future.

"...", Oil on Canvas Mounted on Wood Panel, 16" × 12", 2020

U: What is the most important reason for creating art for you?

Z: The most important reason for me to make art is to create a shelter for my tumultuous and agitated psychological chaos. Art is pure and inclusive that will take in all my restless thoughts without reservation. Painting became Noah's Ark for me to escape from the overwhelming reality and take a gasp to reexamine the past and present. It is a coded diary that I feel safer to detangle my thoughts, speak about my experience, and express my feelings, which all once was unutterable. I enjoy the moment that I completely lose myself to the painting as it owns me, dominants my mind, and leaves no space for me to be concerned about other things in life. Then when I put the finished pieces out into the world, they serve as the compass for finding my place and connections among people.

For more information about Zhaozaho’s art please visit her site and follow her on Instagram.