2022 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Let Me Sleepwalk Through This City, 2022 Performance with soundscape (26:27 min, generated with the voices of the artist and her mother, recordings in the NYC subway, and a poem composed by texts seen in the subway)

This Is for Us to Share is an installation of sculptures formed from old garments, which I have outgrown, inherited, and kept for years. Compressed and bandaged by medical tape, the cut-down, repurposed fabrics are metonyms for the material possessions that pass through one’s life as identity transforms. These sculptures are marked by narratives, especially those from the pandemic: loss of selfhood after migrating to the US; of relationships; stories of separation from and longing for family. Each sculpture crystallizes the past and gives new lives to discards destined for loss of value, proposing an existence not yet here. During the process, I heal through conversing with belongings of past eras and morphing them into object-creatures. Animating a world of reverie, they ask, “what future is there?”

Let Me Sleepwalk Through This City is a five-person performance responding to the disorienting post-quarantine experience of navigating NYC public spaces. The choreography and soundscape draw on the sensation of riding the NYC subway: disjunctive sounds, disruptive visual cues and texts, bodily smells, and brief exchanges with stranger-passersby. Here, sleep is a metaphor for a state of rest from the world of the subway and other New York public spaces. As a woman and an Asian person, I yearn to experience this moment of respite in public—to feel safe and at ease as if sleeping, unperturbed by the external world.

作品陈述：

《由我们共享》（This Is for Us to Share）是由跟随我多年的旧衣服组成的一系列的雕塑。这些衣服里面有一些是父母买的，一些是家人的。在这里，衣物被挤压并用轻柔的绷带捆绑，转喻每人生活中的来来去去的物质用品。这些雕塑象征不同的故事，尤其是发生在新冠隔离期间的一些故事， 比如关系的淡漠，迁移国度后的自我丧失，以及和亲人之间的距离。每个雕塑都是一个凝聚过去的水晶，指向另一种可能性或是还未到来的将来。通过和我的旧衣物对话，创作的过程对我来说是一种治愈的方式。在这些雕塑自己创作的世界里面，他们似乎在问：何种未来在前方等待？

《让我在这个城市里梦游》（Let Me Sleepwalk Through This City）是一个多人行为艺术作品，回应我在隔离期过后每天穿梭于纽约地铁和其他公共场该所的经历。此作品的编舞和音乐召唤纽约地下的一些列元素：多频和互斥的声音，混乱的视觉信号，体味，和与陌生乘客的短暂邂逅。编舞部分融合现代舞和普通行人的肢体语言。在这里，入睡的行为寓言着一种舒适的，不被外界打扰的状态。这个作品实现了我在这座城市里作为一个亚裔女性对”歇憩“的渴望，如同梦游一般，如同听着母亲的的摇篮曲渐渐入睡。

Rengu Zhang is a New York-based, Chinese-born multidisciplinary artist working in drawing, sculpture, moving image, and performance. Drawing on her Chinese roots and the lived transcultural experience, her work materializes feelings and narratives associated with migration, loss, and cultural amnesia. Blurring reality and fiction, her projects often operate in mythological dimensions that collapse time-space. She has exhibited in the US and abroad in exhibitions such as the Inaugural Ice Sculpture Show on Governors Island, NY (2022); “Bi Cang” at Jia Pingwa Art Museum, Lintong, China (2020); and ”Be Beyond: 1st Xi’an Biennale 2019,” Xi’an, China. Her work is in the permanent collection of Copelouzos Family Art Museum, Athens, Greece. Her curatorial projects include “Inundated,” 25 East 13th Gallery, New York, NY; and “Left Unsaid, Miss(In) Personae,” CopeNYC, Brooklyn, NY (2021)

个人简介：

张人谷出生于中国贵阳，现驻扎于西安和纽约。她目前就读帕森斯艺术研究生学院，主修纯艺术。她通过雕塑，绘画，行为艺术，以及影像来诠释文化多元的个人经历和自己的中国文化根基。她所探讨的话题围绕着迁徙, 失去，欲望，和文化遗忘现象等主题。她曾在中国及和海外各个艺术机构参展。参展机构包括：纽约Grace Exhibition Space “This Flesh Is All I Have to Offer”（2022）；西安临潼贾平凹文化艺术馆，“闭藏”（2020）；以及“西安二零一九年第一界双年展”（2019）。她的策展履历包括纽约25 East 13th Gallery，“Inundated,” (2020), 和纽约布鲁克林CopeNYC ，“Left Unsaid, Miss(In) Personae” (2021). 她曾编辑过的艺术出版物包括Project Anywhere 电子出版杂志Anywhere IV(2021)。