Zhang Huan 张洹

Zhang began using ash as an artistic medium following a visit to the Longhua Temple in Shanghai, where he was struck by the ritual significance of the ash from joss sticks burned for prayers. As he described the experience, “The temple floor was covered with ash which leaked from the giant incense burner. . . . These ash remains speak to the fulfillment of millions of hopes, dreams and blessings.”1 Collecting ash from various temples around Shanghai, Zhang used this symbolically charged material to produce a number of “ash sculptures” and “ash paintings” that would preoccupy him for more than a decade, up to the present.

In Ash Painting No. 5, Zhang embedded found black-and-white photographs in the ash-covered canvas, visually representing the hopes and dreams of generations of people. Another series of works rendered Cultural Revolution–era photographs into ash paintings. For Seeds, the artist’s studio assistants meticulously sorted ash into a palette of varying shades of gray, then reproduced a photograph of collective farming by painting with this ash. The labor-intensive process of creating the work echoes these historic efforts of collective labor, suggesting an ambivalent reflection on both the aspirations and catastrophes of the past era.