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Contemporary Art Practice (MA)

Yilin Zhang

Yilin Zhang (b.1998, CN) lives and works in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Contemporary Art Practice, following a BA in Print(Painting) at the China Academy of Art. Her practice traverses the fields of painting, print, installation, performance, workshop and fiction. Influenced by the occult, esotericism, myth, psychoanalysis and science fiction, she aims to create a hybrid immersive situation by blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. Her practice focuses on the traumatic and subjective experience of the Other, using irrationality and perception as a strategy for an ongoing therapy.


Selected Exhibitions:

Beyond Surface, CAP Festival, Royal College of Art, Tate Modern, 2023

Ties That Cannot Be Unbound, New Art City, 2023

Dwelling on the Cloud, Ugly Duck, London, 2022

Sleepless Elysium, Venice Arsenale, Venice, 2022

1st Hyper Youth Award Artist Exhibition, Xixi, Hangzhou, 2022

Song of the Wanderers, Home Gallery, MartinGoya Business, Hangzhou, 2021

Aranya Theater Festival,aranya, Qinhuangdao, 2021

6th China Young Print Artist Exhibition, Guanlan Printmaking Museum, Shenzhen, 2021

FutureLab Art&Design Future Education Expo, WestBund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2020

International Guanlan Printmaking Biennale Shortlisted, 2019

Cement Park Live Art Festival, Moving Mind Museum, Shanghai, 2019


Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesContemporary Art Practice (MA)Public SphereRCA2023 at Truman Brewery

Truman Brewery, F Block, Ground, first and second floors

Artist profile, work in the studio

My recent practice focuses on monster culture and Frankenstein technology, especially about how those uncanny and monstrous figures reflect our fear of rapidly developing industrial civilization. 

I was inspired by the gothic fiction after the Industrial Revolution. As a combination of darkness, mystery, and sacred, gothic uses supernatural events to capture the hysterical force and horror raised by technology. Like Dr.Frankenstein’s monster, it is a pregnant metaphor for the process of capitalist production, which forms by deforming, civilized by barbarizing. It is also related to the Uncanny Valley brought by high-tech products (humanoid robots, dynamic machinery, soft robotics) in 21st century, becoming an allegory of reincarnation. I use paintings, drawings, and immersive installations as my approaches towards the 'Frankenstein Reanimated', creating heterotopia environments to reshape the perception beyond communication.

installation view
Enchantedinstallation view
installation vies
installation view
monster
graphite on canvas, 100cm x 120cm
monster
oil on canvas, 150cm x 120cm

Medium:

paintings, drawings, installations,2023

Size:

180cm x 120cm, 120cm x 150cm, 120cm x 100cm
Exhbition View at ‘Dwelling on the Cloud’ Exhbition, Ugly Duck, London
Exhbition View at ‘Dwelling on the Cloud’ Exhbition, Ugly Duck, London
cloud
fiction

"Umi was sent to this clinic because of the illusions. In the room, through the metal fence, Umi saw a large and constantly wriggling Cloud outside the window. Although doctors and analysts repeatedly told Umi It was just a hallucination, Umi still insists that it exists. During the treatment, the clouds Umi saw began to morph and distort. Umi began to dream and draw them. One day, the Cloud disappeared." 

The work "Cloud: Hysterical Fantasy and Doomsday Melancholy" is a situational hybrid installation based on fictional writing, which consists of a short story with materials such as painting and sound. The text consists of two open parts, the first describes the record of a boy Umi receiving treatment after being diagnosed with illusions, and the other part is Umi as a doomsday world humanoid machine fighting against the runaway schizophrenic cloud in his dreamland.

drawing, monster
fiction

Medium:

fiction,drawing,sound,installation, 2022

Size:

dimensions variable
view
Exhibition View at ‘Ties That Cannot Be Unbound’,New Art,City
paintings, myth
oil on canvas, 60cm x 90cm x 3

Medium:

oil on canvas

Size:

60cm x 90cm x3
Exhibition View at the Top 10 Group Exhibition of the 1st Hyper Youth Award, XiXi, Hangzhou
Exhibition View at the Top 10 Group Exhibition of the 1st Hyper Youth Award, XiXi, Hangzhou
Exhibition View at the Top 10 Group Exhibition of the 1st Hyper Youth Award, XiXi, Hangzhou
participating
Exhibition View at the Top 10 Group Exhibition of the 1st Hyper Youth Award, XiXi, Hangzhou
video
screenshot of the video

This virtual space is an isolation room related to a therapeutic situation, and when viewers enter the room and learn about the recovery system by watching TV from the program, they will be given an instruction manual.

There are 12 diaries in the room, each corresponding to a theme (self, finances, communication, family, romance, health, relationships, death, faith, career, purpose, and secrets). After watching a TV show on TV, viewers can leave any words, pictures, emotions, memories, etc. in the book that they think is related to it. 

As an institution founded on the astrological path, it alludes to occult theory, modern spiritual institution, occultism and monastery.

Medium:

installation, video, drawing,2022

Size:

dimensions variable
fiction
fiction
text

"Chiron's Room" is a virtual therapeutic situation based on narrative dialogue.

By referencing the symbol "Chiron" in ancient Greek mythology and astrology, I wanted to create an open consultation room for dialogue. 

The text is between reality and fiction, pointing to the true meaning of "therapy" in the postmodern context through metaphor and analysis, and thinking about how to reshape individual identity through the means of connection. The text is divided into three chapters (counseling room, temple, astrology) according to the context, and the two sides of the dialogue are mainly set as the therapist and the client. In the text, the identity of the client is enriched from the perspectives of gender, belief, race, etc.; while the role of the therapist will change with the context, including a psychotherapist who specializes in narrative therapy, a Buddhist monk, and a modern astrologer.

Chinese Scholarship Council