Xiao Lin Zhang

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

It’s Simply Just a Feeling

For my fourth-year body of work, I'm investigating notions of incompleteness on a personal level. My work is focused on the concepts of incompleteness by navigating through themes that link to my experiences with social anxiety: such as feelings of alienation, imperfection, empty (hollowed out) feelings and brokenness.

My original idea was to explore what happens when something that is meant to be whole missing pieces, and it filled by the inappropriate. However, after shooting, I feel like the way I present feelings of incompleteness has shifted. I am interested in exploring ways of presenting the disturbed and discomfort that come with incompleteness, projecting my feelings and anxieties onto inanimate objects, and disrupting the familiar with the uncanny. However, I haven’t disrupted the barriers but creating work that seems disturbing, strange, and brooding. I want to make full use of colour collocation to create my own personal space and thought world. I want them to enter my subconscious to search for their answers. It is also a kind of self-redemption from my social anxiety.

When you get anxious, your senses become heightened. In my work, I'm playing around with senses as my social anxiety triggers sensory overload; I want to create a space that feels odd. My work is closely linked with my experiences of social anxiety. During these experiences, I feel like the outsider that disrupts the peaceful space. For my works, I tend to create scenes that are awkwardly odd but stand out.

My works are very intuitive, but I have in my mind how the photos should look. I'm very interested in minimalism and colour theory. For my fourth-year project, I wish to include bold colours that convey feelings of loneliness that incompleteness gives. I want to try something bold through using different props and different colours to create an incongruous effect which is what my work is expressing. It is simply just the feeling each photo gives, which is how social anxiety presents to me, very random but meaningful.

I want to use my body gesture together with the use of colours and props to create different scenes that are incongruous. I aim to visually present the feelings of social anxiety in the most soft, subtle, aesthetic way. I will also include my props in my space. I wish to create a dreamlike space where viewers can navigate through my world that I created.

I also included a sculpture element where I knitted yarn in different colour groups. The yarn is my physical representation of my different emotions. The knitting is a self-healing process for me from all the anxiety. The more I knit, the more I feel better. It’s a very satisfying process seeing how my emotions ‘look’ like a rope. The rope carries negative connotations for me. By making it colourful, it forms a contrast with negative emotions. I will be creating an installation with my sculpture in the space. It’s like I'm unravelling through my emotions, the unknown and the undefined space.