Ningyuan Zheng

Lives and works in Bologna, Metropolitan City of Bologna, Italy

Artist statement

I am an artist, filmmaker and activist born in Fuzhou, Fujian, the region that has sent more Chinese emigrants abroad than any other over the past two centuries. Since 2012 I have lived in Italy, and my practice grows from this position: as an artist and as a migrant, working inside the communities I portray. My research focuses on Chinese migration in Italy, labor conflicts in the global garment industry, and the shifting power relations between Europe and Asia. In Prato, one of Europe's largest textile districts, three rivers meet: the Min from Fujian, the Chenab from Punjab, and the local Bisenzio. Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese workers and Pakistani workers are bound together there by the same supply chains, and often set against each other. I work as an artist-organizer in this territory, alongside unions and workers, building archives of resistance together with the people who live these conflicts. My languages are moving image, video installation, participatory urban walks, textiles and social intervention, supported by sound and music. Each project begins with long periods of interviews, archival research and shared time with participants. Since founding the WUXU collective in 2017, I have treated collaboration as a method rather than a label: authorship is shared when the research demands it, and the resulting works circulate both in exhibition spaces and in the places where they were made, from union pickets to community centers. What interests me is how history...

Artwork