“Home is a place constructed and supported by people” – building city-families with artist Zin Yang

We spoke with Taipei artist Zin Yang about bridging cultural divides and constructing new families in our impersonal cities. Photo: Zin Yang

“Dogs are a man’s best friend”, or so they say. But why limit ourselves to dogs and cats? Many people have already moved to more peculiar animals such as iguanas, snakes, or spiders. But even those are nowadays quite boring, aren’t they?

If you could choose to have any animal ever imagined (yes, that includes dragons, phoenixes, unicorns..) as a pet, what would you choose?

Taipei and London-based visual artist and Human Hotel member Zin would say: “it’s hard to choose between unicorn and phoenix… I would say phoenix because it is very devoted and its tears can be used to heal my loved ones.”

Photos: Zin Yang

Zin considers herself a performance and multi-disciplinary visual artist, actively based in Taipei and London.

“I’m dedicated to making arts that speak across cultural divides. Through various disciplines, particularly site-specific performance, and immersive performance, I attempt to share a new interesting aspect of how we see the world and arouses social awareness to the spectators in a humorous, ironic and game-changing way. I believe every individual and every happening comes with its unrivaled color.”

“Home is a place constructed and supported by people … ‘CITY FAMILY’ uses every participant in the space to assemble a home together”

“My current projects include a series of site-specific interactive performance ‘CITY FAMILY’ executes the word ‘family’ in Mandurian as how a home is assembled by people and a series of photographic works capturing the distinctive landscape of the post-colonized cities.

In Asian culture, home is a place constructed and supported by people; this notion can even be told from the word as ‘jia-ren’ (家人) , a term which combines the words ‘jia’ (家) and ‘ren’(人). As a result, this series of performances ‘CITY FAMILY’ uses every participant in the space to assemble a home together as what it means for family, a place consists of people and home. Every performance becomes a unique experience just like every encounter, every family, every moment, and everyone.”

Her works include immersive and interactive performance, theatre works, and photography. She hopes to create a place to think, imagine, observe, be entertained through her works.