Yi Zhou

Yi Zhou is a Chinese artist known for her multimedia work featuring 3D filming and for her collaborations with the fashion industry. She lived in Rome from the age of ten and studied between London and Paris with degrees in Political Science and Economics.^[1] Her work has been shown at Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.^[2]

Yi Zhou was named as the first artist to endorse a beauty brand: Clarins, from 2010 to 2011. The brand has also sponsored the Venice Biennale solo collateral show of Yi Zhou during the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.^[3] Since 2012, she has collaborated with brands such as Italian luxury eyewear brand, Persol^[4] and Italian luxury brand, Hogan.^[5]

She has also collaborated with the French couture jewelry house Gripoix; a first artist-collection entitled "Pineapple's Secret".^[6] Her animations have inspired clothing collection by the French hip brand, Each x Other.^[7]

In 2013, Yi Zhou was hired as a designer and creative director of a brand to do an articulated complete project ranging from men's wear, women's wear and accessories for Iceberg.

Yi Zhou is one of the ambassadors for the brand Chanel in Paris and has been a regular front row guest on their fashion shows. She also collaborates with the brand on a regular basis on cultural activities of the brand, including features in Vogue Mexico and part of “The Little Black Jacket” book and exhibition.

Since 2010 she has relocated back to China and founded her studio and production company in Shanghai. Yi Zhou is a modern-day Chinese Hitchcock, Yoko Ono and Cindy Sherman, described by Vogue China.^[8] Currently, Yi Zhou is also Tudou.com’s (Chinese would-be YouTube) art-director ^[9] and serves as art and fashion advisory member at Sina.com (which owns Chinese twitter), which owns Chinese twitter (Sina Weibo). Yi Zhou was selected as part of the Women’s Forum and a speaker at TEDxParis.^[10] The artist was also invited by UNDP China to participate with her work at the Rio+20 “The Future we Want” on social media.

Works

Yi Zhou creates multimedia installation artworks combining film, digital animation, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, and contemporary music composition.^[11] Her works explore hyper-realism and neorealism: on one hand, she derives visual and tangible forms from the imagination and dreams, while on the other hand, she gives a surreal aspect to nature itself.^[12]

Her work is a complex synthesis of imagination, literature, mythology, philosophy and new technology and is impregnated with Chinese and Mediterranean culture. Her works introduce the disturbing magic of both virtual and supernatural characters and landscapes as well as the ephemeral reality of life, love, and death while using the symbolic language of the unconscious.^[13]

Blending ancient expressive methods, such as sculpture in marble and 35mm film, with technologically advanced ones, such as 3D animation, Yi Zhou presents a vision of life, transcending both time and space, inflected with irony, wit and a stream of consciousness.^[14] Yi Zhou's approach to art is not only a multimedia one, but it also includes a scientific approach to art. In 2009, she has collaborated with scientists working with NASA, by creating a sculpture made out of aerogel, thus, creating a first collaboration between an artist and scientists working with NASA.^[15]

Yi Zhou held a solo collateral exhibition entitled “Days of Yi” at 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Many of her video works have also been consecutively selected by Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival.^[16] In 2011, she was also invited to show her video works at the FIAC outdoor project in collaboration with the Louvre and Fondation d'entreprise Ricard. In December 2011, Yi Zhou has also done a 15 minutes' piece that she has written and directed for United Nations starring Jackie Chan and Clotilde Courau, which was screened at 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

DVF 2011, 3D animation by Yi Zhou, 2011

DVF 2011^[17]

DVF 2011 is a 3D animated portrait by Yi Zhou that originated as a commissioned piece for Diane von Fürstenberg. In a dreamlike sequence, Diane von Furstenberg blows out of her mouth in an anachronological order female icons such as Audrey Hepburn, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Obama, Wonder Woman, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Angelina Jolie, Charlotte Casiraghi, Mother Teresa, and even Diane von Furstenberg herself.

This work was premiered at Diane von Furstenberg's exhibition in 2011 at The Pace Gallery Beijing, entitled Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress. Instead of painting or photographing Diane for her portrait, Yi conceived of and created an original video work, music by Ennio Morricone, as a moving 3D portrait featuring Diane as an iconic figure from whose mouth other icons escape.

1280 TOWERS — PLACE VENDOME ^[18]

When the Comité Vendôme, at the beginning of 2006, proposed Yi Zhou to create a public project for Place Vendôme, she based her reflection on the symbolic meaning of the Vendôme Column that gave its name to the square. Created in response to this symbol of sovereign power, Yi Zhou’s project is composed of two 8 meter-high columns, located on a diagonal axis with the Vendôme Column as the central point. Each of these two columns are composed of 1280 small towers that are placed on a circular line next to each other, oscillating between the idea of emptiness and fullness. Their shape, inspired by the Chinese chopsticks, evokes the multitude of Chinese population and its constant growing, and refers to an induced geopolitical signification. Like a human chain in which the feminine alternates with the masculine, the fullness with the emptiness held in a collective initiative that starts in each unity.

Built on the pattern of the infinite spiral, 1280 Towers continue the history of art and humanity started with the Tower of Babel that is more recently reincarnated by Brancusi’s Endless Column and Tatlin’s Monument for the 3rd International tower. Despite very different metaphoric significations, all these artworks symbolize the multitude, the universal, and the infinite.

Collaborations

Yi Zhou has been selected by Sundance Film Festival four consecutive times. Since 2010, Yi Zhou has been appointed as art director of Tudou.com and she has suggested the initiative of bridging Sundance Institute members with 2011 Tudou Video Festival and with China.

Yi Zhou also developed a series of online moving portraits of key international players in the movie/fashion/art industries, posted on Tudou.com and Weibo.com. This project not only introduces these celebrities to the Chinese twitter user, but also shows Yi Zhou's approach to her work as a multimedia artist by creating these portraits for the social media only.(Social media portraits anthology I, Social media portraits anthology II, Social media portraits anthology III)

The same attempt can also be seen in the social media play that Yi Zhou has written and performed with Nicola Formichetti in September 2011,^[19] "The Dream", a short film featuring herself and Nicola Formichetti with the attempt of drawing international attention to emerging Chinese fashion designers' works. She has also written the scale for this film.

Music has always be the key to Yi Zhou's works. She has collaborated with Ennio Morricone in 6 of her works: Unexpected Hero (2011), Labyrinth (2011), DVF 2011 (2011), The Greatness (2010), and The Ear (2009). She has also written the music for Clair de Lune for United Nations, premiered at 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Film festivals

References

External links

• Yi Zhou's official site
• Yi Zhou's Weibo for China
• Yi Zhou Venice Biennale collateral exhibition official site
• Yi Zhou's Tudou page
• Yi Zhou's Youtube Channel
• NEXT: Worldwide Talent Representation
• January 21st, 2011 Chanel news:“CULTURE CHANEL” EXHIBITION SEEN BY YI ZHOU
• Shanghai Biennale
• Guangzhou Triennial