ZENG Hong
2020 Arts Fellow
“New Haven is a prism for me to understand American society.”
Describe your artistic interests and areas of focus.
I am interested in moving images, new media, and participatory projects. My project focuses on the mechanism of identity politics and its elaboration through images and narratives.
Share a project you pursued during your Yale-China Fellowship. How were people involved in collaborating on your project?
I initiated a participatory project called Her Trajectory during my fellowship. The project is presented in the form of Internet art. The website visualizes the personal trajectories of women immigrants on the map of the world. By zooming in, each woman’s personal object is featured, alongside her story. Through this lens, this work invites viewers to transfer their perspectives from macro to micro, examining contemporary issues of immigration and identity by looking into each participant’s perception and affection of cultural differences.
How has the Fellowship experience (the place, the people, the schools, the Festival, etc.) stayed with you today? How does it shape your perspective?
I have stayed in touch with people I met during my fellowship, including Yale faculty, students and the New Haven public that I got to know through my participatory project. I continue to exchange knowledge and experience with them. We also encourage each other to get through this difficult time by emotional support. New Haven is a prism for me to understand American society. I observed the lifestyle, cultural custom, and value system of the local people closely via this six-month experience living there. I deem it as one of the most wonderful acquisition of this fellowship program, which will stay with me for a long term.
View Her Trajectory, ZENG Hong’s project during her 2020 Arts Fellowship.
How did you pivot your project to a virtual platform?
Her Trajectory ended up being a project that pivoted to a virtual platform. My original plan was to present a series of photographic work showing the personal objects of migrant women. I would approach participants around town and go to their homes to take pictures. Given the COVID-19 situation, it was impossible to execute the plan and I had to adjust my project. At the end it became an Internet art piece. We changed the participatory form from face-to-face with the participants to Zoom meetings. I asked the participants to take photos of their objects and share them with me instead.
As I am always concerned about the medium specificity of art, I decided to explore the special visual effect of this virtual presentation. The image of a world map with the participants’ trajectories on it had come to my mind, as the lines that represent each participant’s path would be able to convey the sense of connection and disjunction directly and vividly. Also, an interaction designed for the viewers of the website would be ideal for this project because it could literally connect the viewer with these women’s stories, and invoke empathy for their experiences. After discussing with the website designer, we decided to add the animation of the moving objects to further intertwine the objects with the individuals’ travels.
2020 Arts Fellow ZENG Hong curated a group exhibition featuring Hong Kong artists at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven.
What is one piece of advice for someone considering this Fellowship?
Other than allowing Fellows to get access to the amazing resources of Yale, the Yale-China Arts Fellowship provided a precious opportunity for the Fellows’ career development by generously offering support for their art projects during the fellowship period and mentorship possibilities for the long term. The six-month program is an intense time for the Fellows to concentrate on their self-improvement.