10 Questions with Zhanyi Chen

Zhanyi Chen’s (b.1997) works probe how soft science fiction offers intervals to reflect on the tension between sky technologies, their environmental and psychological effects, and the cultures in weather and environments. Using weather satellite data, early Space Age archives, and speculative storytelling, she makes objects that propose how celestial and other infrastructural technologies, from language to electronics, can be strategically misused to prioritise human experience over functionality. When these technologies fail, they become conduits for narrative and emotion, speaking about our constant yearning for miraculous connections.

She has exhibited at institutions including Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), the MIT Museum (Cambridge), and the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art (Fall River). She was a recipient of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts (2024). She has co-organised symposiums on Sky Art at MIT and participated in residencies and research-based projects that interrogate the intersection of infrastructure, fiction, and affect. She holds an MS in Art, Culture, and Technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MFA in Digital + Media from Rhode Island School of Design.

www.zhanyichen.org | @grasstastesbaad

ARTIST STATEMENT

Zhanyi Chen’s art practice probes how soft science fiction provides intervals to contemplate the tension among the relentless advancement of infrastructural technologies, their environmental and psychological repercussions, and the metaphors and culture in weather and environments. In her latest body of works, she explores such tension with a specialised focus on the sky via a series of artworks that engage with clouds, artificial satellites, and human feelings. Her experience receiving image signals from the Russian weather satellite Meteor-M2 has led her to understand the pervasive presence of satellites and their silent integration into, and control over, various environments, similar to numerous other contemporary infrastructures. The sky has never been merely a smooth surface but is striated with all kinds of machines, politics, and power dynamics. Her latest body of work can be seen as exploring methods of coping as responses from an individual caught in such an intermingled environment, and as an inquiry into how we perceive things that are distant from us. Referring to soft science fiction approaches, she strategically misuses technologies to prioritise human subjectivity over technological functionality. In moments where the misused technologies cease to function, but to obscure, to resist, to complicate, to affect, she puts the current dynamics between the self and technologies into play.

Parallel to Zhanyi’s artistic practice, she also takes inspiration from elemental media studies for their broader theoretical discourse on the interplay between the environment and media. Media historian John Durham Peters argues for a more encompassing definition of media that includes environmental elements, including the sky, challenging the traditional dichotomy between nature and culture and the previous academic emphasis on culture over nature. This perspective allows for the exploration and appreciation of the sky’s cultural, emotional, and historical values, which are just as important, if not more so, than any other conventional media, resonating with the intentions behind her artworks. Thus, “media” becomes a term that is semantically richer than it already is and requires a nuanced interpretation embracing all its connotations, and her latest body of works provides ways to explore this materially.

Cloudbusting (Rain Poems), rainwaters, water-transfer printing papers, ink, paper, 2024 © Zhanyi Chen

INTERVIEW

Please introduce yourself to our readers. What is your background, and why did you decide to be an artist in the first place?

Hi, my name is Zhanyi Chen. I'm an artist working with small-scale installations, with a recent focus on sky technology developments and yearnings for miraculous connections. I think my initial interest in art may have started with the forensic investigation books my policeman father brought home. These books accompanied me as I grew up, and later, when I visited an art exhibition for the first time, something clicked. I recognised a familiar space where objects could tell stories, first as forensic evidence, then as art. I fell in love with that quality in things and realised it was what I wanted to pursue.

With a background from institutions like MIT and RISD, how has your academic journey shaped your artistic voice and practice?

Both the programs I attended at MIT and RISD were somewhat connected to technology and digital media. My artistic practice tends to be very responsive to the physical and contextual environments I am in. Being immersed in such tech-saturated spaces, especially at MIT, which is intensely tech-driven, drove me to develop my own ways of coping that centre individual emotional realities within these systems. My tutors in both programs also welcomed critical voices toward technology and private narratives, so I was fortunate to receive a lot of support from them along the way. In the end, many of my works bring a sense of softness or subjectivity to machines that might otherwise feel cold or distant.

Astrological Concrete Poetry to Clouds Written by Weather Satellites, projection, antennas, laptop, satellite positions, size variable, 2020 © Zhanyi Chen

Your work deeply engages with the sky as a technological and emotional space. What first drew you to the sky as a central subject of your practice?

I started a series of works on the hydrological cycle when I first moved to Providence for study, a city that's sort ofseaside, with easy access to a bay, which felt quite new to me since I was born and raised in inland cities. I began with seawater, then moved on to rainwater, and then clouds, still part of the cycle, but the most distant and intangible one. I made a list of different plans to approach it and learned more about various sky artefacts, which opened up a series of questions, including how we sense distant things, or how we build any connections fundamentally. One thing led to another, and I gradually found myself surrounded by theories, archives, and tools that kept drawing me back to the sky. That's how it became a central subject of my recent practice.

You often refer to 'soft science fiction' in describing your approach. How do you define this term, and how does it guide your thinking and making?

I came to recognise the similarities between soft science fiction and my own methodologies just last year. To me, it is a creative approach to discussing technology that prioritises human cultures, individual experiences, and emotions over scientific accuracy, which feels deeply aligned with how I position technology in the narratives of my work. I began referencing soft science fiction when describing my practice, more as a reflective connection. It's an afterthought in the sense that I'm always open to finding shared ethos or inspiration across different creative mediums, including writing.

Projects like Artificial Satellite Astrology and Tele-Sky Unplugged creatively misuse technology. What's the role of failure or misfunction in your work?

I've always appreciated the beauty of failure, malfunction, futility, you name it. In my work, technologies of all kinds break down, get lost, or misfire, from the most fundamental ones like language to more modern ones like electronics. I'd say this kind of misuse speaks to me on both logical and emotional levels. Logically, the failure of infrastructural technologies reveals what we usually take for granted. A flickering light, for instance, briefly exposes the filaments and wiring that connect it to a larger, hidden power grid behind the walls; a broken word, made up of distorted letters with dissolved edges of ink, reveals the linear structure of writing, language, and symbols, just to name a few examples.Emotionally, I find a quiet strength in failed technologies where the absence of function and meanings open up space for yearning, projection, and hope.

Tele-sky Unplugged, sky, CRT TV casing, mirror, camera lens, diffuser, size variable, 2023 © Zhanyi Chen

You've worked with weather satellite data and early space archives. What kind of research or materials do you typically begin with when developing a new project?

Like I mentioned earlier, my work is very responsive to the physical and cultural environments I'm in. Because of this, my initial research can emerge from hands-on experiences (such as tracking and following weather satellites) or from textual and archival sources (like the materials I referenced in the Center for Advanced Visual Studies archive during my time at MIT). Sky technologies, as I define them quite loosely, encompass a broad spectrum, from ancient tools to contemporary infrastructure, and from the material to the intangible, making up an incredibly rich and evolving field. It's a topic full of ongoing developments, deep historical layers, and rich entanglements with art history, and I feel like I've only just scratched the surface. I feel like I'm constantly being pushed forward by whatever new thing I stumble upon while exploring it.

In works like Cloudbusting (Rain Poems), the weather becomes a kind of language. How do you see the relationship between environment, emotion, and media in your work?

It's an interesting observation that the weather here starts to feel like a kind of language, a form of media. In parallel with my artistic practice, I also draw inspiration from elemental media studies, especially for how they rethink the relationship between environment and media. Media historian John Durham Peters, in his book The Marvelous Clouds, expands the idea of media to include natural elements like air, water, and sky. He challenges the traditional divide between nature and culture in media theory and proposes a more integrated view, one where newly included elemental media are studied alongside traditional forms, shedding new light on how we understand the dynamics between ourselves and the natural and built world around us. Once we understand these elements as media, they take on qualities we usually associate with more traditionally studied forms, including being vehicles for meanings and emotions. That's also how I hope these environments/media might operate within my works.

Artificial Satellite Astrology, paper, ink, 11 x 17 inches, 2023 © Zhanyi Chen

Your installations often explore mourning, longing, or distance through atmospheric phenomena. Would you describe your work as emotionally driven?

Yes, definitely. My work involves a lot of research and theoretical grounding. But I only start to feel something forming, or feel the urge to speak, when I connect with a particular emotion. Otherwise, I'm okay with those materials staying in the background. For example, I've done a whole thread of research on the sense of decentralisation in listening to retired satellites and the different power dynamics it brings up, but since I haven't yet felt an emotional connection to that material, I'm fine with letting it sit for now. Ultimately, it's the emotion I want to express that becomes the main driving force behind each piece. It's what guides my decisions and brings the work into being.

Looking ahead, are there particular technologies, environments, or questions you're excited to explore in your future projects?

I'm currently interested in the materiality of radio and other forms of electromagnetic waves, and the concept of clocks (or time) being sky media, as proposed by John Durham Peters.

Artist’s Talk

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