JIAWEI
ZHAO
From: Beijing, China
Based in: New York, US
Born: 1989
Main Artistic Themes: Photography
Web: jiaweizhao.com
Jiawei Zhao is a visual artist. His photographic project Wallpapers grapples with the shifting of culture and everyday life in the U.S. as a result of China’s influence and explores a redefinition of his relationship with his homeland.
Zhao graduated from the Pratt MFA Program in 2018.
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 04/2018
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 04/2018
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 04/2018
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 04/2018
Archival pigment print, 42x56inches, 11/2018
Archival pigment print, 110x80inches, 04/2018
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 01/2019
Pigment print on self-adhesive wallpaper, 42x56inches, 01/2019
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Artist Statement:
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Jiawei photographic project Wallpapers grapples with the shifting of culture and everyday life in
the U.S. as a result of China’s influence and explores a redefinition of his relationship with the
homeland.
He is originally from Beijing, China. Jiawei came to the U.S. at age 18 to attend college, and have been here for ten years since then. The "Wallpaper" series evokes the common practice forty years ago of pasting newspapers on the walls of one’s home, a handy and affordable solution for wallpaper.
Jiawei uses The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle as the wallpaper and hangs calendars appropriated from the internet along with family album photos over it to reference the experience of displacement and cultural assimilation.
He has also been posing Chinese students in the U.S. in front of the Wallpapers; their experience parallels his own.
Selected Exhibitions
