Interview #132 — Louise Zhang
by Matt Chun
Louise Zhang is a Chinese-Australian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation.
She explores the various dynamics of aesthetics, contrasting the attractive and repulsive in order to navigate senses of fear, anxiety and otherness. Zhang appropriates the various motifs of horror cinema, Chinese mythology and botany, placing them in visceral compositions of harmonic dissonance.
Louise speaks to Matt Chun about creative inputs, cultural heritage and professional practice during a pandemic.
So, first we should talk about the obvious. As artists, the current moment is perhaps the most extraordinary of shared experiences, and yet we are all being impacted in vastly different ways. What does your own studio practice look like under the Covid-19 lockdown?
Since the lockdown, I’ve barely been in the studio, which has been quite discouraging. My practice isn’t really one that I can do remotely—aside from the digital stuff—but I’m trying to use the time to heal my thumb RSI and lower back injury. I really, really miss making, particularly when you’ve got your headphones on, in the zone and super productive. I do like it when my studio peers are in and we’re just really in the moment together. They’re really wonderful moments.
In practical terms, I have to be in the studio. I share a warehouse studio with four other really genuinely talented artists. We’re extremely careful when we’re in the studio and we’ve set up suitable hygiene protocols to ensure that we keep the space—and each other—as safe as possible.
The creative industries were among the first to be impaired, and will likely be devastated in the long-term. In response to Covid-19, the Australian government has devised a ‘Jobkeeper' scheme that (unsurprisingly) ignores the arts. What are the implications of the virus for you—both professionally and personally?
Professionally, like many of my colleagues, I’m out of work. I’ve had exhibitions postponed. I’m not sure what lies ahead financially, but I know it will be hard. For now, I’m less focused on my own jobs and more focused on my family’s business which is suffering greatly. I have family in both China and Italy, and they have gone through a lot more than we have or ever will.
So even though there are many things I wish I could do and it’s frustrating and scary and anxiety-inducing losing work, I know I’m highly privileged even in being in this position in this moment right now.
I agree, it is difficult to balance the instinctive response—despair—with an appreciation of our relative privilege during crises. I felt precisely the same way during Australia’s Summer fires, an environmental catastrophe that immediately preceded the current pandemic. You live and practice on Gadigal land/Sydney, which—we can’t forget—began this year under a blanket of smoke.
Personally, for me that was a wakeup call. I’m not familiar with bushfires, living within my comfortable city bubble. I hadn’t previously experienced them first-hand nor been directly affected by them.
What I was familiar with is the destructive nature of fire. During my primary school years, my family had a small factory in Marrickville that burnt down. It was a devastating blow and my dad had to start again from scratch, everything he’d built. But he was able to do it, and he did.
However devastating that was to my direct family and our employees, it was nothing compared to the damage the recent fires have caused, especially to those in more vulnerable positions, without support. So, it was a wakeup call regarding the gravity and impact of global warming to the lives, culture and health of people. We are in a climate emergency now, not a climate change.
I wasn’t as shocked as some of my peers where when we had a red sun, and smoke haze instead of clouds and sky. It reminded me of being in China. But during that time I would occasionally realise: Hey, this isn’t China, this is Australia! My relatives overseas always commented on how lucky we were to have such beautiful clear blue skies or fluffy clouds. That’s going to change. It has changed. I have no doubt bushfires and floods will become more common. If the recent destruction wasn’t a wakeup call for all of us, I don’t know what will be.
Professionally, like many of my colleagues, I’m out of work. I’ve had exhibitions postponed. I’m not sure what lies ahead financially, but I know it will be hard.
I completely agree. I’m also interested to know how you think about the landscape artistically. While beautifully abstracted, your work is always, I think, suggestive of landscape. It echoes the sinuous arabesques of scholar rocks, for example, or the flat-plane ephemera of cloud and water in traditional Chinese landscape painting.
My approach to the landscape was very accidental. I never realised that working with a ‘flat plane’ was inherently traditionally Chinese. I have often wondered why I was drawn to that. I have grown up with a handful of Chinese scrolls and paintings that were gifted to us or painted by family and friends. I wonder if that was an influence I wasn’t previously aware of.
Nowadays, it is something that I try to honour and embrace—rather than deny that my work had anything to do with my Chinese background. This something I use to do when people would comment on my work as having traditional Chinese traits (perhaps because—actually yes because—as a settler in Australia, I just wanted to fit in).
It terms of forms and imagery within these ‘landscapes’, they’re less of a direct reference to landscape as they are abstractions of culture, symbols, representations. I’m constructing a non-dictatorial narrative, a… digestion of otherness.
A ‘digestion of otherness’? Can you tell me more about that?
I guess I would explain it as: figuring it out as I make work? I don’t intend for my work to dictate anything in particular—I don’t wish to force a perspective. But I do wish to narrate a sense of … cultural uncertainty, a projection of progress and learning, perhaps.
Beyond landscape, your works are also wonderfully somatic. You explore bodily forms with a kind of dissolving rainbow-paddlepop palette, always floating (or oozing) somewhere between the delicious and the schlock-horror repulsive. I know that you openly embrace contemporary pop-cultural influences like cartoons and cinema. However, you mentioned that you’ve previously downplayed Chinese art-historical references. In terms of creative input, has this ratio changed in more recent years?
Absolutely. It took me a long time and it’s still something I’m coming to terms with. There’s a lot of history and culture that I do not know enough about and each year I learn more, understand a bit more and try to come to terms with it more. I still censor showing the things—that I’ve explored and learnt or want to do—that are centred around my Chinese heritage. I think it’s more the anxiety of being type-cast and having that define me entirely. Because as much as it is me, it is not all of me. It is an important part of who I am and my work. But it holds me back a huge amount. I think it comes from fear.
My curiosity about that relationship is partly personal. During my own childhood, my Chinese ancestry was completely buried under a thick, Eurocentric layer of fundamentalist Christianity. As an atheistic adult, I’ve been making an effort to recalibrate my relationship with Chinese culture and narrative traditions—with those old ghosts and ancestors. Your artwork feels spiritual. Is religion a significant conceptual base?
My entire childhood and youth was highly centred around Christianity. That line of your question, of your experiences, is exactly what I am trying to do now—not only personally, but artistically too. My family are still heavily involved in the church. My heritage is based in different parts of Wenzhou in the Zhejiang Province. Wenzhou is colloquially called the ‘Jerusalem of China’. There’s a lot to unpack there and a lot of fear about not being a part of the growing Christian population.
I don’t often publicly state that I am no longer a part of that faith for fear of backlash and criticism. I may not be practicing the faith or believe a lot of it, but there’s no denying that it is part of me and influences me just as it does you. It is a slow process, a difficult process. Often the audience doesn’t recognise it, as it’s not transparent enough. But it’s there. I look forward to the day where that reconciliation can be communicated in a way that can be understood. Being understood is great isn’t it!
I still censor showing the things—that I’ve explored and learnt or want to do—that are centred around my Chinese heritage.
I think it’s more the anxiety of being type-cast and having that define me entirely.
Because as much as it is me, it is not all of me.
It really is! Who are the people you’re inspired by?
Personally, I’m inspired by people who work hard at anything they do; whether service workers or just genuinely kind and generous people. I’m inspired by my parents who, like many from migrant families, quite literally gave up everything for me to be able to become an artist. Those sorts of people are my role models in the way I try to conduct my life.
Artistically, at this moment, inspiration comes from learning. Stories told by my Mum and Dad; seeing posters that have faded over time in my Aunty’s restaurants in China; that hideously kitsch mandarin ornament tree thing in my Great Aunty’s home.
Visiting my grandparents, in Wenzhou, Qidu Island, is my biggest inspiration because it’s constantly changing, constantly evolving, and there’s so much history to unpack (and a hella lot of language barriers—thank you Google Translate!)
What are you listening to?
Every morning I listen to The Daily by the New York Times to get my news in. I do like a good crime podcast. My favourite podcast is The Faculty of Horror.
Music wise: Spotify has these cute 80’s and 90’s love song playlists that may or may not be on rotation too much…
What are you reading?
Too much news, frankly. I’m not much of a book reader. I prefer journals, small research papers or short stories. I do like audiobooks though. One book that I have always gone back to is The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. My partner’s favourite at the moment is Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. That will be the next thing I read.
What do you do to relax?
Sleeping is good, aye. I have an adult rescue cat called Lucy. She likes to sleep on my chest. She’s like a warm pompom-loaf anxiety blanket. I’ve always had trouble sleeping, so having good sleep is the ultimate relaxation for me.
Asian-Australian. What does that label mean to you?
Honestly, I’m still figuring this one out. I think a lot of us are. To give a complete statement on this.. truthfully, I don’t think I can yet.
I think that’s actually a great answer. Finally, do you have some advice for emerging artists?
Don’t do it!
Jokes. If you truly really want to pursue a career in the arts, dispel any idealistic and romantic associations you have (or have been influenced by) surrounding the myth of being an ‘artist’. It’s still work, a trade, a business. You’re a sole trader and it’s hard work.
In saying all that, please remember: you can pursue art without having to contribute to the game of it being a career. Because art as a career is business. If you love art but having it as a business doesn’t suit you, that doesn’t stop you from making the art.
Artistically, at this moment, inspiration comes from learning. Stories told by my Mum and Dad; seeing posters that have faded over time in my Aunty’s restaurants in China; that hideously kitsch mandarin ornament tree thing in my Great Aunty’s home.
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Interview & drawings by Matt Chun