The show actually starts out on the street, in this neighborhood that has a very diverse immigrant community. The whole facade has become part of the work Door (Script) (2023/2025). [Comment from the interviewer: The mirrored foil Zhang applied to the window shows a schedule that mimics the opening hours of a business, but the times reflect the waking and nursing hours of Zhang’s daughter, at the time when she began working on her exhibition at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in 2023, where the first version of this work was shown.] When you step inside, there’s an office area, and upstairs, a bookstore and shop. In the first exhibition space, there’s a spill of different balloons on the floor, titled Are You Waiting, Relaxing or Collapsing? (2025). Then, there are these three boxes for wall clocks I found at a neighborhood shop, with congratulatory stickers on them. I collected a bunch of boxes from the area. On the floor, there’s one that I punched holes in in a pattern.
Yes, exactly. And there’s another one I covered with this fabric I found, which has a nice shimmer to it.
But beneath the fabric, it’s just an ordinary delivery box. On one wall there is this hosiery display that I added a little ribbon to, which has a semi-readable, nonsensical text on it: “You the end, you the world ends.”
No, everything in the first room is really found and put together. Also, these two tall, thin boxes over here, which seem almost made for the space–they fit perfectly between the ceiling and the floor. They are open on one side and I hid a scrunchie in each of them. I placed two baskets on the floor in front of these boxes, filled with different kinds of beads, some with letters on them. I also mounted a sentence in vinyl on the wall: “Wherever I go you must be lived in my heart, I hope wherever you go the warmth from my heart to you will alive!” There’s also a pressure cooker’s cardboard packaging covered in vinyl on a wall.
I added mannequin legs here, which I don’t really consider works, but more like stand-ins. They have names based on Cantopop stars from the ’80s: Stanley, Andi, Faye, and Teresa. In this room, there’s a mixtape of karaoke versions of Cantopop songs playing. These are songs I used to listen to in the back of my parents’ car. At that time, I felt emotionally a bit distant from my parents since I hadn't lived with them for some years, but the songs connected me to where I’m from. I decided to use the karaoke versions, with no lyrics, just melodies. The absence of lyrics equals the loss of language. And the boxes, usually containers for different kinds of materials or intangible things, of course, speak to industrial production and the sacrifices involved. When I read about Americans wanting to bring factories back to the U.S., I sometimes wonder if people really understand what it means to work within that production chain–leaving your kids behind and all that.
Both consciously and subconsciously. My working process has definitely become more fragmented since I became a mother. I have a thought, and then it’s interrupted by my daughter’s needs. I’m not sure if I can compare my childhood to hers, but through her, memories come to the surface and materialize in works or language.
In the second room, there’s a sound piece; snippets of sentences I collected from various sources: social media, film, literature, news, etc. I made them into an assemblage of voice recordings, all starting with “I”–very self-centered. Then, there are more mannequins, a stool, and some fake rocks. On one wall, I hung a clothes bag containing a clown costume.
The foil on the back window references a gold plaque that I saw at 23 Quai du Commerce in Brussels. “Fiscalité Comptabilité Gestion.” Next to it, there was another plaque reading: “C’est ici que Chantal Akerman a tourné son film en 1975 Jeanne Dielman.” I didn’t completely understand the three terms on the first plaque, so I started associating them with other words I know that relate to care or pregnancy, and when I later looked up the translations, they were very technical; it was a tax office. I liked the disparity of these two things next to each other and decided to just replicate the first plaque, paired with the title hinting at the address where I found it and at Akerman’s film.
This was a decision I made before arriving in Barcelona–to produce one part of the show more consciously in advance and to let the other half emerge on site. I spoke with Cory, the director of Cordova, about the location of the space and knew that the neighborhood has many bazaars and a lot of Chinese and Arabic wholesale stores. I am quite familiar with the products, as what they offer is quite similar across different cities. In Barcelona, I then mainly took care of finding the different boxes and producing the fabric covers for them in local tailor shops. The neighborhood allowed me to produce the works I had in mind at a pace we’re not used to in Switzerland, mostly because of the flexible setup and the people around, like shop owners and tailors.
Exactly. But then there’s this moment of chance: What do I actually find? I constantly keep lists of sentences and words, which, in this case, related to the topics I had in mind for the show, and sometimes I’d associate something that I found with what I already had written down. So, in that sense, I was prepared and filtered what I saw through what I’d already produced and thought about. I was under quite a bit of pressure, but I started enjoying the thrill and the energy.
Yeah, I was thinking about, as you said, duty–and how liberating it would be to be free from it. The first work, the vinyl foil, already speaks to that dual role of being both an artist and a parent, and I guess the second foil work at the end of the show is another spin on that. Thinking about duty free is almost a moment of wishful thinking. And recently, with all the talk about tariffs and the circulation of goods, that has become an even bigger topic.
In public space, things are usually clearly categorized and easy to read. I enjoy blurring those lines again. It’s pretty organic for me: I recognize and I re-stage. The pressure cooker, for example, really relates to a state of existence–it’s not just about me being under pressure while making this show or being an artist-parent but about how currently the whole world seems to be boiling over. To me, it’s always important how the works are in dialogue with each other in an exhibition, how they form a narrative that’s both funny and tragic. Elements that appear cute, funny, or innocent–like a bow, glitter, or a child–can take on a darker twist. As an artist, I feel affected by both humorous and sad forces.
During my architecture studies, a filmic approach to spaces or the promenade architecturale [comment from the interviewer: a concept introduced by Le Corbusier, referring to a sequence of spaces that guide a person through a building, revealing different views, scales, or moods] were very important. It all started with thinking about these two windows: one facing the street, public-facing, and one facing the courtyard in the back. I wanted to bring the outside in because the questions I’ve been thinking about really address the world.
