Chinese Contemporary Artists
Wang Zhen
Born on February 20, 1996, in Guilin, Guangxi, Zheng (Moham) Wang grew up in Wuhan, Hubei, and now lives and works in Singapore and San Francisco. He is a artist, curator, writer of Mien ethnic-minority background.
He graduated from Rice University in the United States in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree double-majoring in Art History and Visual and Dramatic Arts (Studio Art).
He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2022 with a Master of Arts degree and received the Lillian Disney Scholarship (USD 30,000).
In 2020, his poem Mien Folk Song was selected to be in the 2020 Taiwan Literature Yearbook.
In 2021, his painting Somnium Sinica won the second prize of the Texas Art Alliance.
In 2022, his master’s thesis was selected for the City and Art Forum at Aarhus University, Denmark.
In 2020, his multilingual artist-poetry anthology Mountain Rock was published by Cite E-Printing Co. Ltd.
His poetry drama work Baiyue: Theater of Diaspora was selected for the Edinburgh International Poetry Festival in the UK in 2022.
His prose-poem Evening at the Fishing Port in 2023 was selected for the 2023 Beijing International Poetry Festival.
In 2023, his co-authored paper Sound Art Archives in the Metaverse was selected for the ISEA Electronic Arts Forum in Paris, France.
His fiction Tobacco, Sake, and Lizzard Town won the Fourth Luoye Literature Award in Taiwan.
His poem Crescent Hall won the Fifth Xinhua Youth Literature Award in Singapore.
His curatorial proposal We Are Light Won the Excellence Award of the Second Global College Student Competition on Curating Virtual Exhibitions 2023.
In 2019, he was the first intern of mainland Chinese background to be in the Exhibition department of the SFMoMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) Museum in San Francisco, California, and was selected for sponsorship by the Bank of America Stipend-ship;
In 2021, he was selected for the Shenzhen KONGLAB ‘UFO Curator’ program, and cooperated with Xiamen Nordic Contemporary Art Center and Chengdu ‘Notice’ space for first traveling exhibition “Photosynthesis”.
In 2021, he was selected for the Poetry Residency of the Accent Society in New York and the One Hundred Rivers Return to the Sea International Artist Residency Program of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts.
He was shortlisted for the 2022 Jimei · Arles Video Curator Award.
His academic works can be found in the Aesthetic Education journal of China People’s Fine Arts Publishing House and User Experience Urban Creativity of the University of Lisbon Press, Portugal; poetry, novel, prose, and criticism works can be found in Youth, Qingdao Literature, Young Writers, Taiwan’s China Daily, Vineyard, Taike, Wild Gingerlily, RaPoetry poetry magazines, and Wenhsun magazine; Hong Kong’s Sound and Rhyme Poetry Magazine, P-Article, and Hong Kong Literary; paintings and installation works can be seen in Rice Magazine in Houston, the United States, Archlove magazine, Sine Theta magazine in Italy, M.A.D.S. Gallery in Milan and other exhibitions.
Featured Works
Mountain Rock
Wang Zheng, Book (Artist book with written poems and self-illustrated images), 300 pages, 2022
Baiyue: Theater of Diaspora
Wang Zheng, Video, 20’29”, 2022.
Selected for the 2023 California Institute of the Arts “Interdisciplinary Grant” program with financial support.