Ang Ziqi Zhang’s new paintings are largely informed by the practice of asemic Taoist talismanic calligraphy (fulu). Fulu have historically been used for a variety of purposes including divination, protection, and bodily healing. They also offer some of the earliest historical examples of diagrams combining language and image. Like fulu, Zhang’s paintings use language and diagram as origins without prioritizing legibility or communication. Rather than suggesting answers, she is interested in subverting methods of organizing information. As each painting’s linguistic starting point becomes subsumed into visual structure, lines of thought unravel through processes of layering, entangling, obfuscating: a practice the artist has come to term unfixing.
