Shengni Zhang

My work attempts to visualise abstract concepts such as those connected to scientific research and philosophy. I am interested in how a visual language may communicate these ideas to audiences. I work across different media but I am particularly interested in new areas of making such as 3D art, virtual reality (VR), AI-generated art and working with data and programming languages.

My project, My Dream, My Heterotopia, uses my own dreams to generate images that bring my audiences to abnormal spaces, which exist in reality but that can only be reached through imagination. Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow “other”, it’s “neither here, nor there”. My dreams are my heterotopia. I am interested in the relationship between three dimensional and two dimensional spaces, and the illusionistic qualities of light, material and shapes that can be created in 3D imaging software. Visual motifs such as grass always appear in my images similar to Yayoi Kusama’s dots or Magritte’s green apple. While I am influenced by their ideas of surrealism I am also drawing upon analytical imagery that could be found in science or engineering.  

Now I am still doing research in the field of art and science, I feel that many concepts have to be rethought entirely through our present digital era. I would like to further study on this and might apply for a PhD degree.