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    GOLDEN ROSE CAFÉ -1 金玫瑰咖啡厅-1, Nuoran Zhang, 2021, digital film, 2 minutes 2 seconds

    Around the millennium, many erotic hair salons in old neighbourhoods (including mine) liked to use 'rose' as the name of their stores. But over the past 20 years, with urbanization and gentrification, these salons have been banned, and no one knows where the ladies have gone. They became Hidden People. Like the fate of the old neighbourhoods, the fate of these women has been transformed, obscured, marginalised, and erased.
    Link to full film: https://vimeo.com/563205158

    ©the artist

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    GOLDEN ROSE CAFÉ -2 金玫瑰咖啡厅-2, Nuoran Zhang, 2021, socio-practice performance, digital video, documentation, 2 minutes 25 seconds

    Coffee and Café in China means a high-quality lifestyle and sophisticated food culture. But running these stalls is often a livelihood for the urban floating and marginalised population, such as the unemployed or migrant workers. The coffee at Golden Rose is just like the food at the stall, freshly handmade, and the price is so low that almost all people can afford it. A generation grows old and retires in the community. The old town falls, and the shared memories of the place fade away. This forms an emotion similar to nostalgia, which has no way to be resolved or dealt with. Golden Rose Café, a not-so-fierce resistance derived from nostalgia, is resistance against time and history, as well as resistance against the damage caused by consumerism, class, social injustice, and ideology. In this process, my café stall and I become the gazing object of the crowd. This tension allows people to review & rethink their lives, their communities, their relationships with people, and their relationships with the places they live in.
    Link to full film: https://vimeo.com/563205158

    ©the artist

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    GOLDEN ROSE CAFÉ -3 金玫瑰咖啡厅-3, Nuoran Zhang, 2021, socio-practice performance, digital video, documentation, 2 minutes 12 seconds

    ©the artist

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    text of rhythmic storytelling, GOLDEN ROSE CAFÉ
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    text of rhythmic storytelling, GOLDEN ROSE CAFÉ, Nuoran Zhang, 2021, text

    ©the artist

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    SPINE, performance at Barbican Arts Trust, Nuoran Zhang, 2020, Performance, painting, poem writing on toilet paper

    The text on the toilet paper of the performance: I defiled myself. I washed my flesh I washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed washed it thin as a piece of toilet paper

    ©the artist

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    TONGUE, London
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    TONGUE, London, Nuoran Zhang, 2019, performance, bilingual writing, poem writing on toilet paper

    ©the artist

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    TONGUE, Qingdao
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    TONGUE, Qingdao, Nuoran Zhang, 2020, digital video, 3 minutes 29 seconds

    ©the artist

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    Drama documentation, SHE SPEAKS OF RIVERS, Theatre of Power Station of Art, Shanghai, Nuoran Zhang, November 2020, drama, 16min

    Two generations of “she”, separated by hundreds of years and hundreds of kilometers, use the Xin’an River as the space-time link between them, forming mutual care while speaking, listening, and confronting. Link to the full film: https://vimeo.com/user61842591

    ©the artist

  9. Nuoran Zhang – MA/MFA

    Curriculum Vitae

    Publications

    Rose & Godzilla
    MURZE
    2020.05

Nuoran Zhang – MA/MFA

Physical involvement is essential in my artistic practice. I must bring in my personal experience in creations because, for me, understanding the world must be through tangible experience. I’d rather focus on my real life as a woman and my personal feelings, not catharsis but the most indescribable dull pain in female growth. The life of a lot of women is like toilet paper. Although temporarily pure white and soft, their destinies are already actually doomed.The fate of women is like the fate of the land. The physical suffering of women is like the suffering of the land, being possessed, cultivated, used. I hope my work also has a deep connection to the land it is on and to give the residents a sense of dignity and self-identity.