Nan Zheng

We Can't Say Love, 2023

The emotional expression of Asians always seems implicit. I never heard 'love' from my parents and relatives during my growing up, but they would express their emotions in other ways. For example, my grandpa built a garden for me in my childhood and impressed me, thus I began to set out to trace the beginnings of my memories via architecture.

At the beginning of the 20th century, China was in an era of rapid development and transformation, with many old buildings gradually being replaced by new ones. At that time, western style decoration was prevalent in buildings in China, especially European style. The garden that was built by my grandpa comes from imitating European style also, so when I travelled to Europe and visited those gardens, it brings me a familiar feeling. The building is an object that clearly reflects the hierarchy and usually represents power, identity or wealth. From my perspective, hierarchy is one of the factors that hinder people from expressing their emotions, and the constraint of this hierarchy concept also constrains people's desire to express their emotions.

After filming buildings in different gardens with different styles in Europe, I recreate the images of these buildings and flowers using lumen print. This installation mimics the state of me sitting on a park lawn. The first picture is a garden that I have collaged from memories. In the other picture, there are show many people sitting in a public grass space, they are family, couple or friends. People who watch are placed in the middle of the circle and view the images in an immersive manner. Lenticular images allow the image to constantly change in front of the viewer, presenting a visual effect of overlapping private memories and public spaces.

The Same Sun, 2023

One afternoon while sitting and taking a break in the crowd at London Hyde Park, I had a thought. My internal question is like this: " What difference between us? ", then I have an impulse to establish a connection with them. Immediately I began experimenting to realize this idea. After a few days, I walked into Hyde Park again with a box of photographic paper. I randomly invite people who sunbathe in the park to have a silent dialogue with me. We do not know each other, just face to face lying on photographic papers that I put on the grass, and the exposure finished half an hour later, and I got beautiful shadows of us.

At present, different cultures are increasingly integrated, and " The Same Sun" revolves around identity and equality. Although we have different identities 、 ages or colours, people do not see any difference about that in the images and we all have the same beautiful shade under the same sun.

Disappeared Person, 2022

Disappeared Person is made according to Nan Zheng's memory of the growth environment. In the past, his hometown (Fujian, China) was full of immigration and smuggling, which also brought many problems, such as left-behind children, illegal labor, and organ trafficking. Organs are woven from iron wire and pictures are from the soil in different regions of the earth. The object frame made of steel and light tubes is like a freezer, creating a scene of organ selling.