Bio
Zichun Zhao makes prints and paintings to pose questions about the position of a cross-cultural subject among her communities. Born in Beijing, she recently graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history. She draws on personal memory and elements from literature and myth: especially the Chinese archetype of the female subhuman beings and the narrative function of materials. She is influenced by East Asian feminist discourses about the body. In recent works, she uses translucent surfaces to manipulate the legibility of materials and imagery. Her work resists explanatory clarity, offering uneven access that reflects her negotiation of cultural translation and refusal to the confinement of categories. Her practice reflects a movement between languages, institutions, and conflicting modes of representation, ranging from Chinese academic realism to Western abstraction and material studies. She is an MFA candidate at the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at MICA, Class of 2027.
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