Zhang Hong Mei. Fabric of the City

Over the course of her twenty-year career, Zhang Hong Mei has experimented with multiple forms of expression: from painting to performance, sculpture to video art and environmental installations. Her work stands out for its ability to reinterpret traditional techniques in a contemporary key, carving out an original path in the Chinese contemporary art scene. Her stylistic signature stems from the encounter between two fundamental elements: on the one hand, her training in textile design, which began in China and was further developed in Italy; on the other, the practice of paper-cutting, an ancient technique deeply rooted in Chinese popular culture and in the artist’s personal memory.

The title of the exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Vitali (MUSEC), refers both to fabric as the preferred material of her works and to the urban and sociological concept of the stratification of the city. In the canvases on display in Lugano, fragments of red, yellow, green, blue and black fabric are meticulously cut out and assembled according to complex compositional patterns.

The exhibition is enriched by a few sculptures created in 2013, in which the act of cutting is transferred from fabric to steel sheets. Shaped and folded as if they were thin paper, they give form to dynamic abstract architectures, confirming the consistency and versatility of Zhang Hong Mei’s artistic research.