Tianli Zu
1963 – 1988 Born and resident in Beijing, China
1988 – now Resident in Sydney, Australia
Education
2011 – 2014 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2009 – 2010 Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
1983 – 1987 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, China
1979 – 1983 Central Academy of Fine Arts High School, Beijing, China
Selected Exhibition History
PUBLIC ART PROJECTS
2019 ‘i dance with you’ cutout, light and music installation, Vivid Sydney at Chatswood
2018 ‘Triumph’ Port Kembla monument, Dalfram public art, Maritime Union of Australia Grant (commission)
2018 ‘Excavation’ animation – video channel broadcasting, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2018 ‘i dance with you’ installation – Reflations of Asia Exhibition, Powerhouse Museum (commissioned by the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney)
2018 The Flying Penguin installation – Chinese New Year project, Sydney Aquarium (commissioned by Sydney Aquarium)
2017 ‘Pentatonic Roosters’, Chinese Zodiac Lantern Exhibition, Chinatown (commissioned by the City of Sydney)
2017 ‘Ox Mahjong Lantern’, Chinese Zodiac Lantern Exhibition, Overseas Passenger Terminal, Circular Quay (commissioned by the City of Sydney)
2017 Year of the Rooster installation projection, Hilton Hotel Sydney (commissioned by the Hilton Hotel Sydney)
2016 ‘Ox Mahjong Lantern’, Chinese Zodiac Lantern Exhibition, Martin Place (commissioned by the City of Sydney)
2016 ‘Monkey, Lifestyle and Chasing the Phantom’ three-series light projection, Enlighten Canberra, National Library of Australia (commissioned by the National Library of Australia and Enlighten Canberra)
2016 Year of the Monkey installation, Hilton Hotel Sydney (commissioned by the Hilton Hotel Sydney)
2015 ‘Shadow Maze’ installation, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre (commissioned by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre)
NATIONAL ART PRIZES
2019 “Shadow Paradox”, North Sydney Art Prize
2018 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant III’,National Works on Paper
2017 ‘This is it.’ (portrait of Steve Peters), Salon des Refusés
2017 ‘Not for Sale!’, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award
2017 ‘Dust Shadow’, North Sydney Art Prize
2016 ‘The Senator and Ma’ (portrait of Penny Wong), Salon des Refusés (winner of the Holding Redlich People’s Choice Award)
2016 ‘A New Horizon (self-portrait)’, Portia Geach Memorial Award
2016 ‘The Art Gallery after hours’, Paddington Art Prize
2016 ‘The Cascades Symphony’, Mosman Art Prize
2015 ‘Edmund, your Twomblys are behind you’ (portrait of Edmund Capon AM, OBE), Archibald Prize
2015 ‘Shelter of Shadows’, North Sydney Art Prize
2013 ‘Shadows of Strange Things Reinvented’, North Sydney Art Prize
2013 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant II’, Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award
2012 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant’, Brunswick Street Gallery Works on Paper Prize (winner of the Merit Award)
2011 ‘Everything can be seen as a this’, Willoughby Sculpture Prize
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Approach: celebrating Chinese culture with Australian experiences, Adelaide Festival Centre, South Australia
2017 Missing, Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Western Sydney University
2017 Ji, Vermilion Art
2015 Elemental, China Cultural Centre in Sydney
2013 Shadow Makes This World, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2013 Shadows of Strange Things, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2013 White Shadows, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
2012 Identical Differences, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2011 Un-named, Art Atrium
2010 Infinite Universe, Chinese Cultural Centre (NSW)
1988 Tales, tales, French Cultural Centre, Beijing
1988 ‘Dragon’ (stamp), Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2017 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant II’, Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks
2016 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant’, Foreshadow: Guan Wei, Yang Xifa, Tianli Zu, Vermilion Art
2016 ‘Chance’, Bill Thompson and Tianli Zu in Dialogue, Conny Dietzschold Gallery
2014 ‘Masks 100’, Chinese Whispers, Goulburn Art Regional Gallery
2014 ‘Openness’, Paper, Spot81
2014 ‘Mask’, I Want to Change the World, GAFA Art Museum, Guangzhou
2014 ‘Nuwa created horses on the sixth day’, Crossing Boundaries – A Celebration of Contemporary Asian Australian Art, Sydney Town Hall
2013 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant II’, Snake, Snake, Snake, Sydney Town Hall
2013 ‘A Wonderful World’, Carrying Tigers over Mountains, Permanence Gallery, 798 Art District, Beijing
2012 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant II’, Critical Thinking: Research + Art + Culture, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2012 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant’, Made in China, Australia (national touring exhibition)
2012 ‘A Wonderful World’, The Price of War, Chinalink Gallery
2012 ‘A Wonderful World’, I Am What I Play (in conjunction with AAANZ and AIAS Conferences), National Art School
2012 ‘A Wonderful World’, Cinema Alley, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
2012 ‘Infinite Universe’, Breathe, Art Atrium
2012 ‘Nuwa is Pregnant’, Paper Now, Incinerator Art Space
2011 ‘Up is down, down is up’, 4A Members Exhibition, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (winner of the Emerging Artist Award)
2011 ‘Everything can be seen as a this’, Open Call, Verge Gallery, University of Sydney
2011 ‘Tale’, Cinema Alley, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
2010 ‘An In-between-er Binds in Shadow’, Postgraduate Degree Show, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
2011 ‘Tale’, Comings and Goings: Lai-lai Wang-wang – The Inaugural Documentary Exhibition of Australian-Chinese Contemporary Art, Chinalink Gallery
2011 ‘Butterfly Dream’, Inaugural National Papercuts Exhibition, Yu County, Hebei
2009 ‘Dancing with Ink – Performance’, Action v Action, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
Tianli Zu’s solo exhibition at Art Atrium, Un-named, consists of hand cut paper works and sculptures, with the central theme throughout the exhibition incorporating the use of the shadow. In an effort to narrate Chinese folklore, she explores the simultaneously opposing and complementing polarities to manifest the notion of chance – that ‘nature’ and ‘artificiality’ are merely relative terms. Un-named explores the powerful interplay between negative and positive forces, yin and yang, against the backdrop of nature and today’s technology dominated world.
Tianli Zu lives and works in Sydney. She obtained her PhD and MFA at the Sydney College of the Arts. Her early art training includes BFA from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. Zu was a Finalist in the Archibald Prize in 2015 and was included in the Salon Des Refuses at SH Erwin Gallery in 2016. She was also featured with her public art at Martin Place as part of the City of Sydney Chinese New Year Festival in 2016.
Tianli Zu, White Shadows (installation view), 2012-13. Acetate film, painted with acrylic, hand cut and installation with multiple animation projections. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy the artist
It was the Chinese who invented paper more than two thousand years ago. Ever since that time, intricate paper cuts have been believed to bring good fortune when hung outside doorways and on windows. In the distant past they were created mainly by women, who learned to cut complex designs of pomegranates, peach blossom and lotus flower, as well as the symbolic animals of the Chinese lunar calendar. Skilful paper cutting was one of the skills expected of a bride. Today, it is one of the traditional folk art forms that contemporary Chinese artists are reinventing and transforming in surprising ways, often combined with new media and digital technologies. In Beijing, painter and animation artist Wu Junyong wields his scissors with speed and dexterity to cut all sorts of magical creatures derived from both eastern and western folk tales, as well as his trademark male figures wearing tall pointed ‘scholar’ hats. They are the starting point for dark satirical animations, which take traditional folk tales and then give them a confronting political edge.
In Shanghai, Chen Hangfeng uses paper cutting too, but instead of the traditional flowers, animals, fat babies and double happiness symbols his intricate works hide the corporate logos of the global brands which have transformed the face of China. It takes a moment to realise that what you are seeing in his ‘Logomania’ series are the identifying symbols of brands such as Mcdonalds, KFC, Nike and Adidas. It’s a salutary reminder that branding is so seamlessly enmeshed into the fabric of our lives that we no longer really notice it. Here in Sydney, Tianli Zu uses the skills she learned growing up in China to create complex paper cuts which form the basis of her immersive site-specific multi-media installations. Like Wu Junyong and Chen Hangfeng, she uses a traditional form to represent contemporary ideas.
I spoke with Zu about her practice, and in particular her new work, ‘White Shadows’ at 4 A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Long scrolls of intricately cut paper attached to clear acetate hang suspended horizontally from the ceiling. Reminiscent of Buddhist sutra scrolls, they suggest temple architecture. We sat on folding chairs in the darkened space, faces illuminated by her ethereal projections, our conversation occasionally interrupted by the sounds of sawing and hammering as the exhibition ‘In Possible Worlds’ was installed. Projected shadows, created from animated cut-out forms and lights directed through the delicate paper cuts played around us as we spoke.
Our conversation ranged across many topics, from Zu’s childhood during the Cultural Revolution, to her experiences of learning paper cutting from peasants in Shanxi Province, through to the challenges she faces today juggling the different roles required of contemporary women. She spoke of her interest in Taoism, and the philosophy of yin and yang – the tensions inherent in the binary opposites which make up our world. These are symbolised in her work by light and dark, projection and shadow. As we spoke about her early life she pointed out key images as they moved slowly across the walls of the space. I see squadrons of fighter planes and slowly falling bombs, in reference to a cousin who fought in Vietnam. A bamboo bird cage and the figure of an axe-wielding pigtailed woman come from dark folk tales. The work reminds us of all the most frightening aspects of childhood: the monsters lurking in the darkness; the fear of the unknown.
Zu sees the shadow as a metaphor for things which are repressed or hidden in the everyday world, especially aspects of femininity and female desire. She works directly, cutting the paper by hand without sketches or preparatory drawings. The act of cutting is performative and cathartic. Themes of opposing forces, hidden truths and dark shadows emerge throughout our conversation. Zu’s intellectual parents (her mother a celebrated documentary film-maker and her father an editor) had a vast library of books. At the front of the bookcase were the volumes of Maoist and Leninist theory, but hidden behind these was another layer, which included much Western literature including Shakespeare and Dante. “It was wonderful!” she said. “I would just read – I got the chance because school was not too hard for me, I was the best student. I lived up to my parents’ expectation.” She had considerable freedom in this period of her childhood. She remembers climbing trees, having adventures, even getting in a few fights. “I had a slingshot, I was just like a boy! They cut my hair short, I wore boys’ clothes.” Binaries of masculinity and femininity, sex and death, eros and thanatos, play out in all her imagery.
When she was in her final years of high school Tianli Zu sometimes visited her mother’s workplace at the film studio after class. She learned how to edit film, yet she also saw how editing was used to present a particular, acceptable version of the truth. Similarly, observing her father’s work as an editor of history and reference books, she witnessed first-hand the ways in which truth was manipulated for political ends. “The lie is always there,” she says. In response, she positions herself in a dialogue of duality. “My work is talking about yin, or weakness, or darkness,” she says. “What is the power of the shadow?” I ask. For a moment there is silence as the artist thinks about her response. The cut-out form of a birdcage is silhouetted across her face. Finally she says, “The shadow is revealing the truth. The power is that it needs the light to be revealed. When the light shines through the cut, it casts the shadow and occupies the space. Then they are immortal and they live forever. The shadow becomes free but is hanging in your mind.” Later, she sent me a message to clarify her intentions: “I would like to think that although I am tangled in this material world as much as others, my art is about looking for a chance to transcend or go beyond.”
Image 2 Tianli Zu in her installation
Tianli Zu photographed with her work ‘White Shadows’ at 4 A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist and 4A.
Her childhood and teenage years were spent in Beijing, during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Tianli Zu grew up with her grandparents. Her parents were ‘sent down’ to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, but even before that time her childhood memories are filled with dark shadows. “The day I was born, my mother cried. I was born on the national day, which should have been a happy time. But she said to my father, ‘Another girl’, and then from the first day I came back from the hospital I lived with my grandparents.” She had a sense, always, of being unwanted. “They always said they intend to exchange me with my boy cousins,” she says sadly. “But I always wanted to be loved. This love thing is to me so important, and I wanted to be loved, and I always wanted to make them happy and satisfied. But each time … I am always in the wrong.” When her parents made their infrequent visits, she would lay out all her schoolwork and the calligraphy that her grandfather taught her, desperate for their approval and praise, receiving instead only criticism. “This kind of traumatic memory becomes a shadow – it’s always there.” She points out elements in her work that symbolise this deep sense of abandonment. Slowly falling drops of water become flames, or in another sequence, merge together to become piles of excrement. “You think it’s a beautiful drop of water, something that will get to somewhere… (that will) bring you something good. But then – it’s a pile of poo!” Zu laughs then, as she does many times throughout our conversation, even when the subject matter seems especially dark.
Despite the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, not all her memories of this time are sad. Her grandparents were the foundation of much of her work today. “My grandmother taught me sewing and paper cuts. My granddad taught me calligraphy and every afternoon he read me the traditional stories – the ‘San Guo Yan Yi’, which is all about revenge, royalty, war and strategy.” This story, ‘The Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ is about the three power blocs that emerged from the collapse of the Han Dynasty. It is filled with battles, intrigues and struggles for dominance. The famous opening lines explain why the story has continued to haunt Zu’s memory and influence the imagery in her work: “It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide.” She is haunted by feelings that as a child she could not understand, and by the divisions and separations which prevented a sense of belonging and acceptance. In her work, she is facing her deepest fears, and confronting the past. Zu is the product of a culture in which what is hidden is sometimes more important than what is revealed. “I came with a shadow,” she says, “and with my parents’ shadows. I was my parents’ shadow. I was living to their wish … That’s one thing I cannot run away from, I have to embrace this shadow.” Her work is deeply, intensely personal in a manner similar to some of the artists that she most admires: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Kara Walker and Yayoi Kusama also ‘embrace the shadow’ in their work.
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Tianli Zu, White Shadows (2013) (detail), acrylic on acetate film, hand cut, and light projection and animation, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist.
When the universities re-opened after the Cultural Revolution she escaped the claustrophobia of the family to attend the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Zu loved her eight years of highly rigorous academic training. There were only thirty students accepted in that first year, and they felt extremely privileged to have access to art books and to be presented with new ways of thinking. She immersed herself in Western art history. “We did still life drawing like Cezanne, until one apple was rotten! We looked at everybody basically from early Renaissance through 19th century Romantics through to Modernism and the Avant-garde.” However, after her first four years of study she decided that she was fascinated by the traditional art forms of Han Dynasty tombs and carvings. She went to Shanxi Province to learn more, and spent time living with the peasants, learning folk art skills such as paper cutting. “Straight away something happened to my work,” she tells me. “After the very condensed, very Western, very academic training, it was so interesting staying with them, sitting with them, eating with them, sleeping with them on the kang.” (This is the traditional raised bed, heated by a stove underneath, and covered with quilts, on which families sit, eat and sleep during the harsh Chinese winters.) “I was just fascinated. I looked at how the peasants made their things – so many stories, it’s very rich. It took me back to how I grew up, with my grandparents.”
Since that time, this form of the paper cut has become the central element of her practice. This visual language of light and shadow expresses all the mixed joy and sorrow of her Chinese memories. Much of the work has to do with female experience, and especially the suffocating expectations of the ‘good woman’ in China – the restrictions of Confucian obedience. The delicate shadow of the bird cage references a bawdy tale told to Zu by her boy cousins when she was six years old. A woman discovers to her fury that after her wedding her husband is continuously unfaithful. One night he dies in his sleep, which makes her extremely happy. She cuts off his penis and places it in a basket hanging from the roof, so she can take it out whenever she wishes. Tianli Zu is breathless with laughter as she tells me this story. (It’s no wonder that it made a deep impression on a six year old child.) Now, she sees it is a metaphor about female desire and a woman who is finally empowered to please only herself. “It’s about secrets. She fulfils her own desire spontaneously. I thought (about) the birdcage with something else inside!”
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Tianli Zu, White Shadows (2013) (detail), acrylic on acetate film, hand cut, and light projection and animation, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist.
Other imagery relates to all the unwanted girl children of China, including those who were never born. The final film directed by Zu’s mother was a documentary about birth control intended to extol the virtues of the One Child Policy. After this the venerable film-maker decided that she could make no more films. She told her daughter, “I’ve seen the darkest side of China.” For Zu, her work is like revenge for all those lost girls. Again she points to a section of the slowly changing animated shadow world in which we sit. In the canopy of scroll-like paper many of the cut-out shapes are biomorphic forms. Now I see the references to eggs, sperm and genitalia, as well as to the tiny embryonic forms which signify her sadness at the treatment of female children in the past. She is interested in the ways that women have to manage different identities – wife, mother, daughter, artist – and how they are still, even now, constantly pressured to please others.
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Tianli Zu photographed seated within her work ‘White Shadows’ at 4 A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist and 4A.
The exhibition, which continues until June 8, is based on a curatorial premise which successfully connects the work of three very disparate artists. Themes of intimacy, dislocation, violence and the pleasures of the everyday are explored in different ways. In the downstairs space Elly Kent has used traditional batik printing methods, creating patterns using domestic utensils to stamp simple shapes onto strips of paper that are then dyed, stitched together and stretched over door and window frames. Claudia Nicholson’s work is based on her experience of growing up in Australia as an adopted Columbian child. Like Zu, who has now lived half her life in China and half in Australia, Nicholson has a complex cross-cultural identity. Both artists experience a sense of dislocation. Zu arrived in Australia in 1988, having made the decision that freedom of self-expression was more important that the success she was beginning to experience with her work in China. Nicholson uses her family in her video and performance works to explore ideas about kinship. Zu’s work, too, is centred on the tangled web of relationships and claustrophobic emotions created by family histories. Here are three women who use innovative and experimental approaches to practice in an exploration of those things which matter most to us all. To enter the gallery is to enter a space that is domestic, familial and immersive. In the broadest sense these installations examine female identity in a complicated, changing world.
When you think about Chinese New Year celebrations, penguins may not be the first thing that springs to mind, especially during the year of the dog. But the flightless birds are the focus of one Sydney artist's work, designed to highlight the importance of family this time of year. Greg Navarro explains.
After the doors of Sea Life Sydney's Aquarium were closed to the public, and the sun set over Darling Harbour, Tianli Zu went to work. The Beijing-born artist has faced many challenges during her highly acclaimed career - but this one was different. To peel back the usual expectations of art celebrating the Chinese New Year, and find a link between the occasion and an aquarium.
TIANLI ZU ARTIST "I spent lots of time, I actually visited several times to get the inspiration and to respond to this place."
GREG NAVARRO SYDNEY "The inspiration for these installations was kind of an accident, and only came to mind after a walk by these guys."
TIANLI ZU ARTIST "When I came it was really funny - the penguin was molting, they were shedding their feathers and I thought, wow the penguin, they are getting ready for the Chinese New Year."
The project is a first for the aquarium which had never hosted an artists' work, or taken part in a Chinese New Year celebration.
SAMANTHA ANTOUN SEA LIFE SYDNEY AQUARIUM "We know what an acclaimed artist Tianli is, we've seen her work in the past so we thought why not give something to our guests which is unique, that they can relate to, which talks about family and home."
The end result is a pair of flightless seabird sculptures suspended in flight. And a string of yellow flowers leading to a giant Chinese character for home above the penguin's home.
TIANLI ZU ARTIST "To have that symbol in this place, it is a wish, a suggestion that we unify, not only between humans but also between nature and animals."
Tianli Zu says penguins are the perfect inspiration for a piece celebrating the Chinese New Year, because of the traits they share with humans including a devotion to family.
TIANLI ZU ARTIST "As in everybody together celebrating, it is a time to reunite and to share some good time together."
Proving that art and inspiration go hand in hand - even at an aquarium. Greg Navarro, CGTN, Sydney.
ianli Zu describes herself as a contemporary artist "who happens to be Chinese".
"I don't draw the line in my practice -- contemporary art is just contemporary art. But of course, because of my background, there are elements that come naturally to me," Zu told The Huffington Post Australia.
I strongly believe that all I can do is make work. The work will speak for itself.
Born in Beijiing, Zu has absorbed art from a young age. Raised by her grandparents, who taught her traditional paper cutting and calligraphy, she began studying classical art at the age of 15.
Almost thirty years ago, she moved to Sydney to further her training and has since become an award-winning multimedia artist. But the road hasn't been easy.
"At the time, there were very few Chinese artists here and the Chinese culture was quite hidden. There are more opportunities these days to extend our traditions to the public," Zu said.
Like Chinese New Year.
A celebration of the Year of the
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A celebration of the Year of the Rooster.
She is the artist behind the giant roosters that you may have visited -- or stumbled upon -- in Sydney's Chinatown as part of the City of Sydney's Lunar Lanterns exhibition.
Zu's installation features five large-scale rooster sculptures inspired by her daughter Alice, who was born in the Year of the Rooster.
The work imitates traditional Chinese musical instruments and implements the five-note pentatonic scale. Each rooster is constructed using a gong, cymbal, wooden block and bell -- among other instruments.
"These instruments are an extension of Chinese tradition and incorporate the five elements -- metal, earth, air, fire and wood -- to represent the fullness of life," Zu said. "This is an optimistic work, arising from the characteristics of the rooster, and particularly as we move through a harsh and disturbing period, it is an important message."
I like to extend Chinese traditions -- not leave them stationary.
The work also features a soundtrack composed by Zu's son, Andrew.
"It is based on western orchestral music, but it is very much aligned with Chinese traditional music," Zu said.
Zu, pictured with her son,
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Zu, pictured with her son, Andrew.
"To me, my responsibility is bringing something to the public and spreading our traditions in a way that they can relate to and be part of. My work needs to draw history to the present."
As the celebration draws to a close on Sunday, Zu said she has been excited by the response.
"People have come prepared in their minds to see something Chinese... But broadly speaking, there are more opportunities these days. It's not an easy path, but my work is being seen."
Beijing-born Australian-based multimedia artist, Tianli Zu showcases her charcoal, watercoloured roosters, as well as a large site-specific installation of cutouts.
Zu’s rooster lanterns imitates traditional Chinese musical instruments and implements the five-note pentatonic scale. Its body is a gong; its head is a cymbal; its tail is a wooden block; its wattle a bell; its beak and legs are flutes; its feet are piccolos; and panpipes form its comb. The five roosters appear in five colours, which symbolises the continuity of Chinese tradition.
The rooster lanterns will be shown in the spiritual home of Chinese New Year, Chinatown, illuminated with programmed lights synchronised with music written by composer, Andrew Zhou. Viewers are invited to participate by hitting the gong.