Shellie Zhang: ‘Abundance’

Opening Reception: May 1st, 2020, 6-9pm Exhibition Dates: May 1 - June 7, 2020 Location: Patel Gallery, 1151 Queen St. East

Abundance is a new project featuring sculptural, photographic, and installation-based works. The exhibition is a cyclical reflection on two actions: the artist’s relatives bringing her pieces of cut fruit in her youth, and her leaving fruit offerings at their graves. The project features different arrangements of both real and artificial fruits and vegetables displayed in bowls from the artist’s home and collection of family heirlooms. These serve as a metaphor for the dreams and labour that extends across oceans and generations. Combining visual cues from imagery of plentiful fruit in produce advertisements, still life paintings, bowls of decorative produce displayed in restaurants, offerings at shrines/temples and the tradition of gifting fruit, Abundance looks at how we connect to the spiritual and natural world through the objects that we imbue with meaning.

Shellie Zhang (b. 1991, Beijing, China) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. By uniting both past and present iconography with the techniques of mass communication, language and sign, Zhang’s work deconstructs notions of tradition, gender, identity, the diaspora, and popular culture while calling attention to these subjects in the context and construction of a multicultural society. She is interested in exploring how integration, diversity and assimilation is implemented and negotiated, how this relates to lived experiences, how culture is learned, relearned and sustained, and how things are remembered and preserved.

Zhang has exhibited at venues including WORKJAM (Beijing), Asian Art Initiative (Philadelphia) and Gallery 44 (Toronto). She is a recipient of grants such as the Toronto Arts Council’s Visual Projects grant, the Ontario Arts Council’s Visual Artists Creation Grant and the Canada Council’s Project Grant to Visual Artists. In 2017, she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is a member of EMILIA-AMALIA, a feminist reading and writing group. Zhang’s work is in the TD Bank Corporate Art Collection, the Drake Hotel Permanent Art Collection and numerous private collections. Her work has been published in Canadian Art, the Toronto Star, Blackflash Magazine, CBC Arts, and C Magazine. Recent projects include a publication with the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and a solo exhibition at the New Gallery (Calgary). Upcoming projects include solo exhibitions at Artspace (Peterbrough), Patel Gallery (Toronto) and AKA Artist-Run (Saskatoon).