Zhang Ruyi

The mixed-media output of Zhang Ruyi, site-specific pieces made with everyday objects, explores the interactions and tensions between people, materials and places. Her installation Vacant Lot, which extends through the rooms of the abandoned Musée Guimet, evokes her experience of confinement during isolation and lockdown episodes in Shanghai. Reappropriating symbols usually associated with daily life, her piece uproots known realities: the external air conditioning unit welcomes visitors, the aluminium of kitchen appliances covers the walls, and bathroom tiles fill the space. Unsettlingly strange, Zhang’s work fuses industrial products and organic elements, laying bare the fragility of domestic comfort.

Also on view at the Fourvière Museum.

Artworks :

Untitled, 2020
Air conditioner unit

Decoration-Lighthouse, 2019
Aluminum foil, UV print, clip frame, net, wood panel, color pencil, non-glare plexiglass

Decoration-Beneath the Specimen, 2017
Aluminum foil, UV print, clip frame, net, wood panel, color pencil, glass

Untitled, 2020
sound 11min 06s

The Waste, 2020
Aluminum foil, construction rubble

Planter-7, 2022
Construction rubble, cactus thorns, nail polish

Decoration-layers, 2022
Aluminium foil, UV printing, clip frame, wood panel, rubber, colour, pencil, watercolour pencil, cactus thorn, copper wire, net

Sleepwalking About the Space, 2021 - 2022
Ready-made (Door), rebar, tiles, concrete

Folded Sorrow, 2021 - 2022
single-channel video 7’00’’

Edge tool, 2012
single-channel video 7’12’’

Speak Softly, 2020
Plastic curtain, cactus spines