{"id":74773,"date":"2024-04-28T07:18:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T14:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=74773"},"modified":"2024-06-05T18:27:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T01:27:04","slug":"unfamiliar-magic-and-mundane-places-transform-shiya-zengs-finch-lane-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/unfamiliar-magic-and-mundane-places-transform-shiya-zengs-finch-lane-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfamiliar Magic and Mundane Places Transform Shiya Zeng’s Finch Lane Exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ceramic<\/a>

Shiya Zeng, “Forgotten Chinatown”<\/p><\/div>\n

Shiya Zeng exhibits unfamiliar magic around the perimeter of what I like to call the Sunset Gallery, at Finch Lane. Then, to show just how magical it is, she contrasts it with a relatively mundane counterpoint that appears to restore her audience to Salt Lake City, though to a place she has transformed. Magic is something artists achieved in the past by virtue of art\u2019s inherent powers, but which seems to have fallen out of favor in an age of blunt social commentary. In a few moments and with fewer than 20 works, though, she dissolves that misapprehension, along with a few others.<\/h4>\n

Zeng opens with nine stoneware sculptures that conjure places and things from her memory, though as is often the case with memories, especially childhood ones, some imagination is also involved. The first, \u201cForgotten Chinatown,\u201d places five individual buildings together on a newspaper, opened to the classified section and folded there, and next to them a plum. This fruit, because it blossoms between seasons, is taken to symbolize Spring, which as the season of new birth is appropriate to someone who, as a child, emigrated to Utah from her native Guangzhou, a large city in Southern China near the transitional, administrative district of Hong Kong. The plum is also a sign of health and a reminder to live in a new, better way.<\/h4>\n

The next, \u201cAltar Table,\u201d presents model foodstuffs and tableware, echoed by the actual table on which they sit. If it hasn\u2019t already happened, at this point the work begins to charm the viewer. The next two works, \u201cTerrace, Utah,\u201d and \u201cGolden Spike,\u201d advance the artist\u2019s claim to an historical connection between Chinese people and her new home. The story of the building of the transcontinental railroad, largely with Chinese labor, is another tale of exploitation and ingratitude, one in which the completion of the work by \u201cguest\u201d labor was followed by the Exclusion Act, which expelled the workers and their families for decades. Yet Zeng drains the story of resentment and accusation, even as she restores the Chinese presence that eventually led to toleration.<\/h4>\n
\"A<\/a>

Shiya Zeng, “Altar Table”<\/p><\/div>\n

Her next work, \u201cThe Jade Cafe,\u201d adds a soup\u00e7on of Hollywood magic to her restored Chinatown. Where the buildings in the first work were solid objects, this one is a facade only. Behind a brick planter, filled with homely plants, a sign in the front window reads \u201cOpen.\u201d On a more personal note, I was reminded of the way the town of Ephraim was rocked in the first decade of the new millennium by news that a Chinese restaurant was to open in that tiny college town, which doubled in size every year when academic immigrants filled it. Odd to discover how a town built by European immigrants had felt itself incomplete until this additional import arrived.<\/h4>\n

Appropriately, \u201cHomework\u201d invokes the simultaneously contained and expanding world of the student. These tableaux recall the lives of Zeng, her family, and her countryfolk in Utah, but by giving them not just their subject matter, but a child-like presentation, she not only invokes her own experience, growing up on the margin of a strange, new home, but also the viewer\u2019s own feelings and memories which, though likely to be different, nevertheless involve a world of placement and scale: everything was larger in the present, but has become smaller, with fewer specific details, in the past.<\/h4>\n
\"Ceramic<\/a>

Shiya Zeng, “The Jade Cafe”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Shiya Zeng, “Homework”<\/p><\/div>\n

The remainder of Past, Present, and Future<\/i> contains nine gicl\u00e9e images of the transient reality of the local Chinatown. Their captions tell the story with restraint: \u201c1987-2020\u201d on one, \u201cRelocated to 115 W 9000 S, Sandy Renamed Super China Market and later Ocean Mart in 2011\u201d on another. \u201cRelocated due to rent increases;\u201d \u201cBurned down and rebuilt as Kim Lona Fresh Market;\u201d \u201cRelocated;\u201d \u201cRelocated to 1701 S State Street.\u201d<\/h4>\n

A viewer might walk along this wall and fail to notice the litany in fine print: not just of change, but of an ongoing struggle for some sort of lasting future. At some point, the use of media, from mock-amateur ceramics to these formal prints, makes a vital point. The story of the Taishanese language, belonging to the third-largest city in China, yet having \u201clittle mutual intelligibility\u201d with the Cantonese spoken a dozen miles away, is too complex to tell here, but while we, her audience, are fluent in many visual dialects, including a child\u2019s charming models and an adult\u2019s remote, revealing prints, there\u2019s a danger of remaining oblivious to the demands other languages make on those who lack the convenience of having only one, when it\u2019s the most common: the one \u201ceveryone speaks.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Shiya Zeng\u2019s deft hands and supple mind work a subtle magic, through which a vital, if largely invisible part of Utah begins to appear through a mist of ignorance and neglect.<\/h4>\n
\"Minimalistic<\/a>

Shiya Zeng, “Ocean City Market”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shiya Zeng: Past, Present and Future<\/em>, Finch Lane Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through June 7<\/p>\n

All images courtesy the author<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shiya Zeng exhibits unfamiliar magic around the perimeter of what I like to call the Sunset Gallery, at Finch Lane. Then, to show just how magical it is, she contrasts it with a relatively mundane counterpoint that appears to restore her audience to Salt Lake City, though to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":74785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[96,4559],"class_list":["post-74773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-finch-lane-gallery","tag-shiya-zeng"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Home-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 20:55:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74773"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76011,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74773\/revisions\/76011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}