Xinshuo Zhuo is a Chinese artist, based in Naarm, Melbourne. Zhuo’s practice is grounded in the exploration of complex experiences and feelings common to those within diasporic communities, and he uses visual metaphors and symbology to explore the fluidity of emotion. Zhuo is interested in the experimental space of traditional photography, utilising alternative photographic processes to consider bodily interactions in time and space. Working exclusively with analogue photography techniques, Zhuo’s striking work centres around themes of conflict and alienation with universal resonance.
Unnatured presents an installation of silver gelatin photographic prints. These technically precise works have been deftly crafted through layered darkroom processes, printed on fibre-based paper, and toned with black tea. These subtle considerations imbue the works with a sense of time and care, and a certain warmth. Drawing on the tradition of wabi-sabi aesthetics, wherein the beauty of imperfections are celebrated, Unnatured privileges emoting, and reveals the unspoken. Poetic and visually enthralling, these works aim to evoke empathy and understanding.
Image: Xinshuo Zhuo, Unnatured, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
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'Surging through exits when the bell goes' is a design-led research project that examines how the aesthetics of high school environments and digital platforms shape the hidden curriculum of contemporary education. It traces how physical architectures of control have evolved into the visual and behavioural architectures of digital systems, focusing on behaviour monitoring systems.
Formed through slow, meditative processes of hand-stitching, wrapping and dyeing, 'Inheritance' weaves together Chowdhury’s lived experiences as a first-generation Bangladeshi-Australian artist.
'Steel Karkade' showcases the multifaceted experiences of Black women in the diaspora, as well as the artist’s South Sudanese heritage. For her, the livelihoods and narratives of her ancestors and the Black women who came before her are significantly underrepresented and unwritten; her practice endeavours to bring light and permanence to their stories and cultural history.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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