Bio and CV 

Working through the media of performance, video, and writing, Zou Zhao investigates how power and ideology are established through language and linguistics. Her works examine the very materiality of the voice itself, through the acts of listening and speaking, revealing the roles that they play in situations that chart the course of political histories.

 

Crucially, her aural/oral- driven practice addresses the role of the English language in the neocolonial distribution of knowledge today, as indicated through the signifying regime of globalisation. Herself a Chinese immigrant to Singapore, once a colonial outpost of the British, Zou Zhao’s indeterminate diasporic identity testifies against any claim to a language’s transparency, and argues that a contemporary subjectivity today must be understood as produced by ‘translation’.  depart from her specific interest in the gap between the demand to communicate in English, and her thoughts in Mandarin.

 

Many of her works take the form of lecture-performances and interactive workshops, which emphasise the immediacy of the voice and situations arise from the usage of speech. Recent works include On the Threshold of Listening (2017), The Apology Embassy (2016), Chinese is not a language! (Bring in the wine) (2014), and One of my troubles (2013). Her workshops encourage viewers to become active participants, where multiple voices are allowed to come into being.

 

Zhao graduated from the Visual Arts MFA programme at Columbia University School of the Arts in 2017. She was awarded an MA in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2014. Zhao’s performances were recently presented at the Centre Pompidou as part of the 89plus exhibition Filter bubble: Prospectif cinéma (2015). Her work has also featured in no.w.here, London (2014); He Xiangning Art Museum, Nanshan, Shenzhen, China (2014); and Camden Arts Centre, London (2013). The world precedes the eye, Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore (2016), On The Threshold of Listening, The Old Parliament House, Singapore International Festival of the Arts (2017), Americans 2017, Luma Foundation (2017),Constance Gallery, New York City (2018), Neiman Gallery, New York (2018), The Jewish Museum, New York City (2018). She currently lives and works between New York City, Singapore, and China.

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For a full curriculum vitae, download here.