More about the artwork: It’s Complicated is a reactionary response to questions such as “where are you from”, “why are you here”, and the need to position migration as a dualistic them and us, here to there conversation. The phrase encapsulates the awkward and convoluted nature of discussing diasporic existence and the struggle of transcending identity politics through art. By using humour to defer the more complicated subject matter that it references, the work elicits a sense of refusal to engage. Who is in on the joke? Who is laughing? Are they laughing with or at us? It is a chuckle or a cackle? United under the umbrella term that attempts to capture complex multiplicities, It’s Complicated re-envisions the generalization of diasporic communities as a unifying term, which celebrates multifaceted journeys and stories.
Shellie Zhang (b. 1991, Beijing, China) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. By uniting both past and present iconography with the techniques of mass communication, language and sign, Zhang explores the contexts and construction of a multicultural society by disassembling approaches to tradition, gender, the diaspora and popular culture. She creates images, objects and projects in a wide range of media to explore how integration, diversity and assimilation is implemented and negotiated, and how manifestations of these ideas relate to lived experiences. Zhang is interested in how culture is learned and sustained, and how the objects and iconographies of culture are remembered and preserved.
What do you think about Zhang using humour through the words and sounds of her artwork to discuss complicated ideas around identity, culture, xenophobia, and belonging?
Watch EXTRACURRICULAR: Shellie Zhang (8:46) embedded above Reflection questions: Zhang talks about the diaspora, and how food helped to bring community together.
What communities are you a part of?
Can you think of ways that food has brought you and your communities together?
Zhang also talks about how memories can be lost for diaspora communities.
What ways do you and your communities hold on to or celebrate memories? What role does language play in this?
Zhang talks about one of her works, text on a red card that says “The only way to survive is to take care of each other”.
Why do you think Zhang chooses to use language and words so much in her artwork?
What do you think of the message in this artwork?