Zhidong Zhang is an artist and educator. Their practice explores social, political, cultural, and sexual relationships among the institution, the body, and modes of embodiment. Working primarily with photography, assemblage, and installation, their work negotiates and creates narratives where image-making becomes a form of history-making. Zhang’s practice and process invite alternative, autonomous modes of identity construction through/by/via metabolizing bodies that are often overlooked, eroticized, or politicized. Zhang’s work has appeared in The Boston Globe, i-D Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Boston Art Review, and among others. Recent awards include Creator Labs Photo Fund (2023), Collective Futures Fund (2023), and Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (2021). They were a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2022), an artist-in-residence at MASS MoCA (2021), Center for Photography at Woodstock (2022), Boston Center for the Arts (2022-2024), and TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image (2024).

Zhang currently teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Contact: zzhangphoto@gmail.com