Han Zhang

“Our relation to language requires our interpretation and unpacking of the world hidden behind the words.” 

Han Zhang, born in 1988, is a Toronto-based Chinese artist whose work explores the subject of language, translation, meaning and cross-culture communication. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with High Honor Thesis in Studio Art from Mount Holyoke College in MA, USA and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at York University, Canada.

Her artworks raise a main question: How do we interpret text and how do we navigate our path to the essential meaning of things? Han provides ways of introducing and reconfiguring aesthetic frameworks of the current traditional Chinese calligraphy and, engaging the concept of cultural translation, creates spaces between languages. She questions the problematic issues in literary and poetic translation: loss of meaning, instability of understanding, and subjectivity of interpretation. Wood, thread, paper, ink, glass, mirror and other fragile materials are the resources which Han Zhang uses to construct and deconstruct language, challenging viewers’ perception and interpretation of the poetic nature of language and translation. She invites the viewer to develop a new relationship with the symbolic limit of language.

Han Zhang has exhibited internationally in a number of group and solo exhibitions. Recently, she was invited for solo exhibition at both the 2014 and the 2016 International Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial.