Zhou Wenjing

Zhou Wenjing

China

 

Born in Hunan in 1989, now lives and works in Paris and Beijing. In 2017, Zhou Wenjing received her master’s degree from L’École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes Métropole.

Zhou delves into issues of identity, gender, body, illness, power, times, and the intersection thereof. She participates in social issues through a multifarious art practice that spans exhibition, writing, and curation. Taking a personal and micro-historical approach, she engages in issues including affection and physical objects, power and alienation, the personal and the public, social ethics, and geopolitics.

Manufacturing / Symbol

Towels

25 × 3 m

2017

 

This work was created for the deserted Chongqing No. 4 Cotton Mill in Hechuan City, which, back in the days, used to manufacture yarns of cotton, linen, blended-fibers, and unprocessed cloth. In the 1970s my grandmother migrated from Liaoning to Zhuzhou, Hunan, and worked at its municipal towel manufacturing plant until the early 1990s. After she passed away, my father and I discovered 20 kilos of towels in her wardrobe she had left behind. I sewed these old towels by hand into a large sail measuring 25 meters long by 3 meters wide.

“During the exhibition, the retired female workers of Chongqing No. 4 Cotton Mill took a group photo in front of my work with their former work clothes, which made this work have another steric life. I love it so.”

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