About
Erica Zhan is a Chinese interdisciplinary artist and writer, based between Chicago and elsewhere. They employ performances, films, images and writing to interrogate professionalism, competition, regulation and vulnerability in late capitalism. Zhan acts as a rule hacker and an alternative player in their practices in order to reveal and provoke the regulation of normality. Their investigated themes include sports, games, health care, consumption, advertisement and so on. By using humor and irony, Zhan wants to scrutinize the zones of freedom in human society that have been eroded by standardization.
Zhan graduated from the MA program in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have been accepted to different residency programs internationally including GlogauAIR Online Program (Berlin), Ox-bow Longform (Saugatuck), Ragdale Residency (Lake Forest) and SODAS 2123 (Vilnius). Their performances and works have been showcased at various venues, including the International Museum of Surgical Science, ACRE Projects Gallery, Ragdale Foundation Gene Siskel Film Center, Comfort Station, No Nation Art Lab and other locations. Additionally, Zhan writes poetry, fiction, and art criticism, with art reviews published primarily in The Art Newspaper China (rebranded as The Art Journal in 2024).