Ziyun Cheng (b.1998, Changsha, China) is a visual artist currently based in London.
For her photography is not just a record but a relation to herself. Her work explores the connection between material, memory and intimacy. She has repeatedly withdrawn from memory and emotion, eager to find emotional support and sustenance through media expression.
2021 - 2023
Photography, MA, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2016 - 2020
Photography, BFA, Beijing Film Academy, China
A wounded soul seems to end up wrapped
in a hardened shell.
And then eventually we all end up being
what someone else wants to be.
Living as someone else wants to be.
Pretending to be.
Photos are the carrier of memory and imagination. When we look at photos, the re-experienced emotions and memories emerge in our minds. Thanks to photography, our memories and emotions are settled and orderly. It's like seeing the photos in my childhood, which evokes the memory deep in my heart, and even produces emotions beyond the memory itself. Familiar residences, familiar people, and familiar moments make people feel very safe, or maybe like Roland Barthes' "punctum" is suddenly touched. We can't be sure whether the memory really existed, but when we are touched, when the memory becomes concrete pictures or words, it seems to have existed, because we are always living under the influence of the memory.
We soothe ourselves by re-experiencing protected memories - "The Poetics of Space"
I tried to describe how I feel about home. For me, home seems to be wrapped and soft, but since I left home, it seems that I can't go back, as if there is a barrier. Maybe like a silkworm cocoons, wrapping itself in soft silk and tearing it apart, and then allowing itself to be reborn. It can't go back, it's soft, but you can't say it's useless. Whenever I look through the photos of my childhood, I always have mixed emotions. I think the photos are cute, but also feel a little sad. I tried making an empty ball of yarn that seemed to have a hard yet soft shell. I combined the photos from my childhood with the ball of yarn, it looks like my feeling about the house, I grow wantonly in this space full of memories.
It's like finding a pivot in the real world.
"Ceramics" can sometimes retain a moment like photography,
Maybe like documentary photography,
Searching and capturing like a camera lens,
Find a place to connect with yourself,
Eliminate inner loneliness by finding a pivot.
The process of the clay from soft to hard
in the hands records the process of my emotions,
It transforms invisible emotions into form,
It became a combination of my emotions.
Even the most vivid memories are sealed away with time, and when we look back again at the memories ignited in our hearts, it always seems to be separated by something, and eventually only a blank space remains.
