"I used to fantasize that the world was a sleeping beast who was gigantic, bizarre, and quiet," writes Chinese photographer Wen Xin Zhang. "I was able to imagine it as my secret friend, regardless of its wishes. The silence of the beast was an umbrella, shielding off most truths of the world. Everywhere was but a strange land waiting to be explored and discovered. Since I have entered the process of adult socialization, my view of the world changed, from a given and relatively static universe to an ever-moving, progressing ribbon that needs to be pursued. This caused the loss of one mental dimension. To find my lost dimension back, I escaped from my routine life and started my trip of getting lost."
"Caves are an important topic throughout my creative practice," she says about her new exhibition at MUD Gallery in Shanghai, "images of hollowness resonate with the mysterious ancient strange trees from MUD Gallery collection. And together they enter our human iris. The cave is a place where geological time and ritual space meet, and the ancient, strange trees are regarded as a passage to meditation in various religious traditions. With their forking shapes, the shriveled trees invoke a labyrinthine passage to human consciousness, calling us to ascend and descend with them. Deep down the passage, rock ashes and shriveled trees morph back to organisms from ancestral time, inviting us to step out of our anthropocentric bubble, to imagine all things evenly, and to compose a game of our collaborative rebirth."
