Tianning Zhang 张天宁
About
Tianning Zhang
an observer/ an explorer/ a storyteller/ a visual designer
Tianning focuses on a personal exploration of the links between design and society, incorporating her own experiences and perspectives. Much of her work is based on the observation and comprehension of reality, but interpreted through an alternative perspective.
Different visual languages and media are the signatures of her work. She uses completely different fields and perspectives to interpret the themes, making them seem 'impossible', and tries to disrupt conventional thinking with this connection of unrelated things, to expand people's perceptions, creating visual flux and empathy.
She is also a storyteller, narrative plays an important role in her projects. Her recent research has focused on how to create narratives in her work that are independently navigated by the viewer. And generating new definitions of the work through the audience's understanding.
- 2022-2023 MA Information Experience Design, Royal College of Art (UK)
- 2018-2022 BA Visual Communication, China Academy of Art (CN）
Statement
After Escape (2023, Tianning Zhang)
After escape offers a new perspective and field to explore the narrative, the social structure, and the human being itself.
This project focuses on the balanced relationship between human beings and society, and on the social system of homogeneity and oneness.
In such a society, the idea of the human being is gradually eliminated and the human being is gradually transformed into a functional object that serves society. "Social stability", "perfect genes" and "perfect human beings" are the ideals they seek.
You can think of it as an exploding space (website), as every clue inside could be your evidence to discover the secrets of this society and indict the world.
You can be a bystander, or Beryl itself.
Perhaps, each of us is Beryl.
Story Background
After Escape is based on the year AG482 (AD2494). In this era, gene editing is widely used in humans to modify their genes to become "perfect".
GPTC (Genetic Programmer Training Camp) is a company that focuses on developing excellent genetic programmers.
It was established to train genetic programmers. They recruit people who are well-rounded in moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic development to enter the company and learn programming, mathematics, technology and biology to edit human genes to perfection.
Beryl was one of those who entered the GPTC as a genetic programmer, but she rebelled a few years later. She left behind many clues about her years and then disappeared.
It's an abyss, an endless cycle.
Beryl's working space
Medium: 3d Modelling/ looping video
Size: 3840 × 2160
Beryl's working website
Medium: website
After Escape
Medium: video
Size: 3840 × 2160
My name is Beryl
1.
We dwell in possibilities, with god giving us the right to choose.
I was a faithful servant, a humble doll of it.
I thought I was the one who was trying and exploring the possibilities.
I thought my life was full of meaning.
I thought, like everyone.
However, I was just this PATHETIC SOUL, who was stuck in the so-called perfect age.
2.
I was lucky, that I achieved my ‘dream’, early in my 18th year, an age of knowing nothing.
I was unlucky, that I was the one who made it my dream.
And I found out it late enough, and desperate enough.
3.
This is a cycle that, people enter this cycle, and pulling more people into the cycle.
Together they form the driving force that makes the cycle work.
And don't realise it.
4.
Those secrets of the world, meaningless rage.
I abhor.
They are in the deep of my blood, heart of my bone, where I can’t reject them and eliminate them.
I tried to escape from here.
The place of the endless cycle.
5.
I gazed into the abyss, and I see the countless me, the me that I once was.
My name is Beryl.
Dystopian Social Rules Lab
The workshop Dystopian Social Rules Lab creates a Dystopian context where people become Dystopian Social Consciousnesses and need to create a Dystopian Society from which there is no escape due to the inner orderliness constructed.
Medium: workshop
Practices
