Statement 

Zhang grew up in China as an only child under the official Chinese one-child policy. Like many people of her generation she often felt a sense of having lost a sibling. In 2008, she received a BFA degree in Beijing. Zhang then came to the United States to study for her MFA.

Zhang has since developed a body of paintings which explore loss, abandonment, and anxiety. Her paintings articulate sensations of the underlying violence and psychological tension she has experienced. Her paintings explore a zone that fuses familiar landscapes with a sense of alienation. To Zhang, being Chinese is at her core, but she continues to seek her role as an artist in the mainstream culture of the United States. 

Zhang seeks and confronts the underlying violence and discontention that is born from the depths of her urban experience. Mattress and double beds become characters in this drama set against cold, wet, ghostly, and quiet night scenes of highways, sewage tunnels, and parking garages that recede into the distance. The double beds are fragile and must make their way through a landscape of threatening events and brutal weather. The paintings are the result of her confrontation with all that is contradictory. The work works through a fusion of two powerful traditions: Chinese and Western. Her paintings are at times apocalyptic and difficult. Zhang's work from is influenced by a variety of sources including European painters like Van Gogh and Kiefer. Zhang hopes that the viewer will find resonances in her work with their own experiences.