In 2011, the QCC Art Gallery established a cultural exchange with the Guang Zhou Academy of Fine Arts in China resulting in the exhibition Duality, a series of works in clay and bronze by sculptor and Professor Wenzhi Zhang. The artist displayed groups of cast or fired sculptures representing human figures of deeply personal interest to Zhang. These included females in progressive stages of physical decline: deeply honest representations of contemporary women in changing roles. She also created caricature-like (but clearly identifiable) Red Guard figures of the artist’s childhood, transformed into ludicrous clay figurines, starkly naked except for identifying headgear and carrying parcels of Maoist literature for distribution. Zhang also took on the vast history of Chinese myth and folklore, reconfiguring the image of the dragon to endow it with human attributes, rather than bestowing upon that august creature the more traditional traits of turtles, fish, or snakes. The special virtues attached to her sculpted forms emerge both from her imagination and subconscious levels of ancestral conventions.
