A FILM IN TWO PARTS, THE SECOND of WHICH NEVER ENDS
Solo show by Jiajia Zhang

Jiajia Zhang works with photography and video, and more recently, she also develops sculptural installations. For A FILM IN TWO PARTS, THE SECOND of WHICH NEVER ENDS, her solo show at Istituto Svizzero in Milan, she creates an expansive installation that transforms the exhibition space into a site where private, even intimate, and public spheres overlap. The artist is interested in the standardizing structures that shape us within these spaces: whether it’s the bollard-like stone elements that guide our movements in public spaces—appearing in the show as a kind of ready-made—or the standardized processes encountered when learning a foreign language, as depicted in Jiajia’s new video work.

Download the curatorial text and floorplan here.

Biography:
Jiajia Zhang works across different digital (moving-)image media, video, and photography, which she presents in spatial installations. She rearranges the partly self-produced and partly found visual material in an exact process by relating the fragments to each other in unexpected ways. This way, social phenomena, and mass-produced products meet minor matters like private YouTube videos or Instagram posts. The artist thus opens up a tension-filled borderland that blends the personal and the generic, challenging our entrenched definitions and notions of private and public. On the one hand, Jiajia Zhang’s work is a pictorial stocktaking of reality; on the other hand, it confronts us with the speculative element reality’s perception entails. Jiajia Zhang studied architecture at ETH Zurich from 2001 to 2007 and photography at the International Center of Photography, NY, from 2007 to 2008. In 2020, she completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her work has been part of various exhibitions and screenings, including Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2024), Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2024), Giorno Poetry Systems, New York (2024), All Stars, Lausanne (2023), Kunstmuseum St.Gallen (2023), Kunstraum Riehen, Basel (2023), Fluentum, Berlin (2022), Swiss Art Awards, Basel (2022); Werkstipendium Zürich (2022); FriArt, Fribourg (2022); Coalmine Gallery, Winterthur (2021); Kunsthaus Glarus (2021); Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard, Paris (2021); Haus Wien (2020); Kunsthalle Zürich (2020); Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2019).

On the occasion of Milano Art Week
08 – 12 April 2024

08-09-10 April H11:00-18:00
11 April H11:00-20:00
12 April H11:00-22:00

On April 12, as part of Milano Art Week, there will be an Exhibition tour and conversation with artist Jiajia Zhang and curator Gioia Dal Molin from 17:00 to 18:00, followed by Together? Together! , featuring a screening in collaboration with Mousse curated by Gioia Dal Molin and Barbara Casavecchia from 18:00 to 22:00.