Yurou Zhang

Painter

Based in Chongqing, b.1996

Zhang specializes in the traditional medium of colored ink on silk. Her work constructs a poetic space where emotional experience, the perception of the female body, and spiritual imagery intertwine through a highly symbolic visual language. Utilizing the fragile and delicate qualities of silk, she explores themes of vulnerability and resilience.

Zhang is adept at layering multiple semantic threads within her compositions. Through the construction of semiotic and psychological spaces, she guides viewers into an aesthetic experience that navigates choice and fate, reality and illusion, presence and disappearance. Recurring motifs such as lace, roses, and silkworm moths form a metaphorical system of entrapment and constraint, while elements like rainbow-hued “candies” and winding vines hint at latent vitality and hope amidst adversity.

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ARTWORKS

  • Touch

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 18.5 × 23.6 inches, 2023

  • The urban environment is her context, and the green construction net her symbol. In Zhang's visual system, this net—ubiquitous in cityscapes—transcends its functional purpose to embody notions of protection, hope, and regeneration. Bouquets wrapped in the net signify blessings of life; hearts formed from bubbles, moths drawn to flame, and the edge of burning lace evoke the fleeting tension between beauty and destruction, desire and loss.

  • Relieving Melancholy

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 9.45 × 15.35 inches, 2024

  • Entwined

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 9.45 × 15.35 inches, 2023

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  • The Best Decision

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 21.26 × 29.92 inches, 2022

  • A Room of One’s Own

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 31.5 × 21.65 inches, 2022

  • Exhaustion

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 15.75 × 21.65 inches, 2023

  • One Step Forward

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 24.4 × 17.7 inches, 2022

  • Ignite

    Mineral pigments and ink on silk, 13.78 × 19.69 inches, 2023

  • Yurou Zhang’s paintings do more than narrate—they awaken emotional perception and critical reflection on contemporary existence. The rose-thorn-pierced hand, the lace-gloved touch, and the interplay of violet and yellow hues all reflect her acute sensitivity to lived experience and her ongoing inquiry into the individual’s inner world. Balancing the soft with the sharp, the illusory with the tangible, Zhang’s artistic practice unfolds as a profound exploration of contemporary experience, female subjectivity, and the boundaries of visual language.

Available Works

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