photos courtesy of Dia Zheng
Artist Michael Zheng spoke with our group at our September gathering.
Originally from a small village in Fujian Province, he studied computer science
at Tsinghua University and came to the U.S. for his masters degree at Marquette
University. Before he’d even graduated, he was hired by Cisco. By his
family and the village’s standards, he had made it. But he felt unfulfilled. When
he was accepted to San Francisco Art Institute, he up and quit Cisco. He said
it took him three months to tell his family—well, his older brother—and the
reaction was as expected. “You idiot. What are you thinking?” He, however,
continued to move forward (going back was not even an option.) His first
attempt at painting in class—he was a novice never having received any kind of
formal instruction—was met by an outsider wanting to pay 100 dollars for his
piece. His professors mentored him, pushing him to where they believed he
needed to be—a new genre of art called Performance Art. Some of Zheng’s initial performances were
linked to the clash of east versus west.
He did a piece on Personal Space, where he intentionally invaded
people’s space to witness their reactions (from inclusion to anger). He did a
piece on Public Display of Affection where he kissed and groped a woman in the
lobby of MOMA for six hours. He did a piece on smiling—“only westerners smile
so much”—coloring his teeth like a rainbow. “There is so much power in art,”
Zheng said. Zheng’s courage to follow
his heart—wherever that takes him—was inspirational. (And the family not only
eventually understood, but have become his greatest advocates.)
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