Junjun Zhou

Studies of Swans (installation view), 2021

inkjet prints, cardboard, paper, thread, cross stitch pad, ink pad, rubber, spoon, plate, envelope

Dimensions variable

Responding to an incident of false memory when the retrieved photograph confronted me that the swan-shaped boat I remembered floating behind the three-year-old me was in fact a group of swans, the collection of seven swan objects retell the story by reiterating the falsified image.

a yellow beak, black eyes, and a white body (installation view), 2022

white stoneware, boat chair, ink jet print, pencil, correction fluid, tape, oil pastel, screws

In conversation with Studies of Swans, this piece recalls and reimagines the swan boat from the perspective of a 3-year-old child. In so doing, the installation extends the physicality of the swan boat and claims space for its reappearance.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

handkerchief(手帕), 2022

paper, cross-stitch, yarn, found objects, digital c-type prints

134pages, 8.5” x 5.5” (book)

handkerchief(手帕) is a series of work mapping the time and spatiality of and around the object. Including words and materials alike, the work is an assemblage of processes, reweaving the handkerchief and translating the extensive duration condensed in the palm-size, unassuming object into imageries.

Artist Statement

In my work, I explore objects and languages as grammars of materiality. Working with mapping and writing as descriptive activities, I continue to adjust my position and engage the narratives resting in the spaces in between.

An object is a point of intersection in the intricate coordinates of relations, especially in the space of memory. I study curious objects and map out their intimate yet estranged relations with me. In one of my works, responding to an incident of misremembering the three-year-old me in front of a swan-shaped boat which is instead a flock of swans, I retell the story from its periphery. In the obsessive reiteration of the falsified image, the installation concretizes the absent swan boat and claims space for its reappearance. Clay, paper, and cross-stitch that are marked with pencils, words, tape, and correction fluid participate in the interplay of time and the suspended space. Entering found objects and intervening the ordinary with dissonance, I try to relocate materials and their original narratives in the unverifiable retelling. In a motion of unstable focal points and oscillating perspectives, discourses foreign to my history engage in the study of my memory.

Leaning towards the unassuming, I investigate the peripheral objects without drawing a conclusion. Coordinates of and around them are translated into imageries, spreading out on the off-white painted wall, the smooth hickory flooring, and the extended graphing paper. Recollecting the past in present, the non-linear approach to temporal objects is the syntax of my works. Like yesterday and like tomorrow, I circle around the “definition” and never land.