Zhenyi Zheng

Zhenyi Zheng is an illustrator, a visual narrator. She uses drawing, making and photography to tell stories.

Her current work is informed by experiences of isolation through this last pandemic year. It explores the link between isolation and social connection, as well as the relationship between the human body and the spaces in which we live. Under the influence of this pandemic, she has been living alone for a long time. In this state, life experiences that were easily overlooked have been magnified.

Through the long period of staying at home, she has developed a use of spatial formats to build interpretations of the spaces we inhabit. Her current project focuses on narratives played out between co-habitants within a home space, trying to make a sense of playing and exploring, to confront these sad circumstances.

She is thinking about whether we can really exist as detached from other people, and the dialectical movement in life, between restraint and freedom.

I wandered in the universe of my home,

Seeing the tiny and huge,

Feeling the subtle and grand in the house.

It seems that everything is familiar, but it is broader and more complicated than I see.

The bedroom hides my emotions.

The table is a tool for distinguishing our behaviour.

The plants in the house are a growing landscape; they know everything.

The window is the eye of the house, the connection between the inside and the outside world, and making them integrated.

Continuous home life has prompted me to have a more intimate connection with the space where I live. I am both a witness and a bystander, experiencing and observing the space.

Inspired by the phenomenology and semiology of lived experience in architectural places, I realised that there are far more profound meanings within the home space.

Dialogues between flatmates have been recorded, then made visual as comics, made physical as play blocks, and re-performed by the same flatmates. The illustrative components of comics, blocks and performances link and translate to each other.

Dialogue : Table Solution

“Look, as we can’t go to the college studio, and we happened to move to our new flat, why not build the studio at home.”

“But now we have three tables, How to organise them? We really need to separate them by different function.”

“Yes. It’s so hard to concentrate working at home. So, we must distinguish the purpose of each table.”

“Two of these tables for each of us to study and work. How about the last one?”

Medium:

Acrylic, Colour Pencil, Digital, Wood, Magnets, Video

Size:

Illustration: 297mm×420mm. Wooden Blocks: Multi

Dialogue: Plant Knows Everything

“How long have we stayed at home? It's been too long. Sometimes I doubt whether all this is true.”

“Of course it's true. Look at this monstera, it proves everything. The old one was bought when I first came to London. The younger one I transplanted from the old one during the first lockdown started last year. At that time, he was still a young seedling. But you see, they have grown so tall now.”

“So, It is truly growing. We are also living in real life, but the world is a bit different.”

“Fortunately, they accompany us. They don't speak, but they know everything.”

Medium:

Acrylic, Colour Pencil, Digital, Wood, Magnets, Video

Size:

Illustration: 297mm×420mm. Wooden Blocks: Multi.

activity blocks connection home space illustration inhabit isolation making performance phonomennology plant wood

Dialogue: Window as Connector

“When the epidemic began, I eagerly wanted to open the windows, on the one hand for air quality reasons, and more importantly, because the windows are a link between me and the outside world.

“After the outbreak began, I paid more attention to the scenery outside the window than before. The smell in the air outside the window gave me a sense of real existence.”

“I often stare at the tree outside the window, imagining whether I can jump from the window to the tree.”

Medium:

Acrylic, Colour Pencil, Digital, Wood, Magnets, Video

Size:

Illustration: 297mm×420mm. Wooden Blocks: Multi

blocks connection home space illustration inhabit isolation making performance phonomennology window wood

Dialogue: A Floating Bedroom

“Do you feel bored if you stay in your bedroom for a long time?”

“Maybe, but sometimes I change the layout of my bedroom, which can give me a sense of freshness.”

“Sometimes, I imagine whether everything in my room will move after I fall asleep. My pillows, my scarves, my clothes… I may not be sleeping alone.”

Medium:

Acrylic, Colour Pencil, Digital, Wood, Magnets, Video

Size:

Illustration: 297mm×420mm. Wooden Blocks: Multi

bedroom blocks home space illustration inhabit isolation making performance phonomenology semiology wood

Zhenyi Zheng

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Royal College of Art