Object of the Month: “The Eye of the Tornado”
By Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Born in Shenyang, China, Hong Chun Zhang (张春红) grew up in a family of artists. She pursued her own interest in painting and drawing at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing before moving to the United States in 1996. There, she received an M.A. at California State University, Sacramento in 2002 and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis in 2004. It was in graduate school that Zhang developed what would become the hallmarks of her work: large format, black and white renderings of long, luminous, strands of hair that demonstrate her skills in traditional Chinese ink drawing and painting. During the early years of her studio practice, she combined this imagery with her emerging interests in gender and femininity, noting that “a young woman’s long hair is associated with life force, sexual energy, growth, and beauty … I use long hair as a metaphor to extend beyond the surface.”
These formal properties are apparent in The Eye of the Tornado, a 2023 Chinese ink scroll drawing the artist created while in residency at Studios Inc in Kansas City, Missouri. Here, delicate strands gather at the bottom right before entangling and growing into a massive, twirling tornado that eventually overtakes the edges of the scroll. Added to the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in October 2023, the drawing demonstrates new directions in Zhang’s practice: moving beyond explorations of gender, she is now considering issues of place, environment, and cross-cultural connections. Recent work, including The Eye of the Tornado, depicts the swaying prairie grasses, rolling Flint Hills, and swirling tornadoes that characterize northeastern Kansas, Zhang’s adopted home since 2015. By juxtaposing the monumentality of the natural world—in this case, the powerful atmospheric forces that generate tornadoes—with the frailty of human existence—exemplified by gossamer filaments of hair—the drawing asks us to ponder our place in the world we inhabit.
In The Eye of the Tornado, Zhang also meditates on her identity as a Chinese immigrant in the United States by simultaneously paying homage to and breaking away from Eastern and Western conventions of landscape painting. The format of the hanging scroll, a staple in the Chinese landscape tradition, accentuates an Eastern philosophy of spatiality as fluid and unfixed. At the same time, the vortex of brush strokes and Zhang’s dynamic activation of the picture plane could just as easily be likened to the gestural provocations of American Abstract Expressionist painting. The work also speaks to more personal issues the artist faces as a Chinese American person living in Kansas. Writing about this work, Zhang explained that the “black and white colors not only reflect the visual dynamic of Yin and Yang, but also challenge political and social stereotypes of divisions within Kansas.”
The Eye of the Tornado emphasizes the evolution of Zhang’s practice in other ways as well. Eschewing her usual paper or silk as a drawing support, she has here used Alcantara, a synthetic fabric often used to line the interiors of luxury automobiles, aircrafts, and yachts. Produced in Italy, Alcantara is produced by combining advanced spinning, chemical, and textile production processes to create a fabric noted for its durability, stain resistance, and suede-like finish. Zhang discovered Alcantara while completing an artist residency in Milan, Italy, and noted that it offered many advantages for her artmaking practice, including eliminating the perennial challenge of smudged ink and charcoal. Demonstrating the artist’s emerging interest in textile technology in a global context, The Eye of the Tornado is currently on view in Threads: Artists Weave their Worlds, which highlights artists who engage with the materials, techniques, and visual idioms of the textile arts in innovative and unexpected ways. The exhibition will remain open until October 13, 2024.
Cassandra Braun, CuratorSabrina Lin, Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs
Bowdoin College Museum of Art