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My name is Yuqing Zhu. I am an American artist of Chinese and Mongolian heritage, named after a mythological flood-tamer of the Yangtze river. I am also a neuroscientist. I study the computations involved in perception of the visual world. Perception is an active process – in every moment, what we see is an imposition of what we wish to see. It is also heavily shaped by past experiences. I create self portrait collages as a means of constructing a personal mythology based upon my past, my present vision, and my hopes for the future. In the absence of forthright dialogue with one’s heritage, as has been the case in my life, personal history takes on a myth-building quality. Real events, ornamentation, convenient falsehoods, and Chinese and Mongolian fables are cut-and-pasted together into sometimes surreal, sometimes hyperreal scenes in my artwork. They compose the truest story I can tell.
My name is Yuqing Zhu. I am an American artist of Chinese and Mongolian heritage, named after a mythological flood-tamer of the Yangtze river. I am also a neuroscientist. I study the computations involved in perception of the visual world. Perception is an active process – in every moment, what we see is an imposition of what we wish to see. It is also heavily shaped by past experiences. I create self portrait collages as a means of constructing a personal mythology based upon my past, my present vision, and my hopes for the future. In the absence of forthright dialogue with one’s heritage, as has been the case in my life, personal history takes on a myth-building quality. Real events, ornamentation, convenient falsehoods, and Chinese and Mongolian fables are cut-and-pasted together into sometimes surreal, sometimes hyperreal scenes in my artwork. They compose the truest story I can tell.
Hou Yi in the Time of Ten Suns
graphite, pastel, and paper, 19 x 28 in.
Rouge/Rogue
graphite, pastel, and paper, 11 x 18 in.
Phylum Mollusca
graphite and paper, 6 x 8.5 in.
Marbled
graphite, colored pencil, and paper, 6 x 8.5 in.
Tarvaa, Horsehead Fabler
graphite, pastel, and paper, 19 x 26 in.
Neon Goddess Nezha, Vanquisher of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, Trips in Her New Boots, Thereby Dropping Her Third Lotus Head, Pearls, and Glorious White Stetson into the Hole in the Universe
graphite, pastel, pen, and paper, 19 x 26 in.
(bonus—digital exclusive) Patron Saint of the Precession of Poetry, with Encounter at the Blanik Knight
graphite, pastel, and paper, 19 x 25 in.
(bonus—digital exclusive) Celadon, Porcelain
graphite, colored pencil, and paper, 6 x 8.5 in.
(bonus—digital exclusive) Forest for the Trees
graphite, pastel, and paper, 6 x 9 in.