{"id":15328,"date":"2021-04-26T14:20:23","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T18:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/?page_id=15328"},"modified":"2021-05-05T10:19:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T14:19:56","slug":"wenjing-zheng","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wenjing-zheng\/","title":{"rendered":"Wenjing Zheng"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wenjing Zheng&#8217;s Artist Statement<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2021\/04\/Wenjing-Zheng.mp3\" autoplay><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Qiankeng Village is my Laojia, the \u201cold home.\u201d In China, the old home is the place where your family and previous generations originated. I lived in my old home when I was two years old and only return during traditional Chinese festivals. Sometimes I feel close to Qiankeng Village since my grandparents have lived there for more than 40 years, but other times, I feel alien to the place due to the limited time I have spent there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My work is an experimental video of my grandparents\u2019 lives in my old home, a rural area where all the residents wake at 6 am and begin raising their gardens and animals. In my mind, I had romanticized the abundance of their lives- cooking delicious food, basking in the sunshine, growing plants, raising ducks, and relaxing. I thought people in the bustling city would never imagine the tranquility of their lives. But it turned out things were not as I assumed. It is a plain life, a cycle of waking up, working, and going to bed. Many scenes of my video show the repetitions of cooking and gardening. I shoot when my grandparents are busy dealing with their mundane duties because I want them to be natural in front of the camera. We do not talk a lot while I am filming, instead, I record our conversations using my phone and add a voiceover to the video later.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This work is also an exploration of my personal journey back to my old home. I split my time in half: Each week I traveled from my current home to my old home and spent three days there. Using different modes of transportation, such as cars, buses, and motorcycles, I noticed the trivial beauties that I never noticed before. For example, when I was riding a motorcycle, I smelled the fragrance of various plants and heard the sounds of wind. When I was on a bus, I saw farmers leading their cattle, watering their crops, and chatting with each other. I went to the market, documenting my grandmother\u2019s bargaining with the merchant. I went to the downtown area, experiencing the lively sincerity which I seldom noticed in the city. I saw the old merchant of a soy store happily giving more soy to customers who compliment his soy, with no additional charge. The children playing in the public park are delightedly sharing their stories with strangers.&nbsp;I also spent days walking on my grandparents\u2019 farmland in order to identify each plant, see how they grow, and understand how much effort my grandparents exert on them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The process of making this work has given me different versions of my hometown, and a look into the reality of my grandparents\u2019 lives. We often focus on the differences in our lives, and even exaggerate these differences, but in making this work I have found that all lives share some similarities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wenjing Zheng&#8217;s Artist Statement Qiankeng Village is my Laojia, the \u201cold home.\u201d&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1736,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-15328","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1736"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15419,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15328\/revisions\/15419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}