Hanzi He

BIO
Statement

Hanzi He's practice centres on a simple observation: when something touches a surface, it leaves behind evidence of that contact. She is drawn to traces from daily life — marks that nobody notices at the time, but that carry the weight of ordinary moments. Working through etching and drawing, her work moves between passive recording of accidental imprints and active mark-making, exploring how humble, everyday traces can preserve something of the time and touch from which they came.

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Work

• • Bread  Etching  Project
  • Bread
    
  • Bread is Bread
    
  • Edible Frames
    
  • Inter-interscapes
    
  • Peeling
    
  • Huling Project
    
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Recent Projects

Bread Etching Project

2025-2026

Bread has been a recurring material in this practice — chosen for its organic, unstable nature. Pressed into soft-ground zinc plates, it leaves behind traces of its own transformation: the texture of its surface, the evidence of drying, shrinking, and change over time. These works explore what etching can preserve when the material itself is temporary.

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Bread

Bread creates a self-referential paradox using bread as both material object and textual definition. The bread becomes its own ingredient list—simultaneously a material object and a textual definition; simultaneously a tangible substance and an abstract symbol.

Through this work, a fundamental question is explored: What happens when something becomes its own description? Can art exist purely independently without pointing to or depicting any external things?

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Bread is Bread

2025
Bread is Bread employs bread frames and video documentation to explore the relationship between material substances and their imposed meanings. Three bread frames of different sizes, along with their production data, reflect on the over-interpretation and symbolization in artistic creation. The work emphasizes the directness of "what you see is what you get," critiquing contemporary art's tendency to over-interpret materials by returning to bread's material essence, while also pointing to practical issues such as scale, value, and material consumption in artistic creation.

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Edible Frames

2025
Edible Frames employs printing and video techniques to explore and articulate the significance and value of art. The bread-shaped frames symbolize the distinction between need and meaning, as well as the essential role of art in the spiritual life of individuals. The work conveys the idea that art only truly gains significance when people experience spiritual "hunger."

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Inter-interscapes

2024
Inter-interscapes explores the intimate connection between people and environment using cyanotype, sewing, and video. The left-hand-shaped sofa symbolizes the safety and sense of belonging associated with HOME, as well as people's dependence on it. The video and cyanotype objects depict daily life as remembered in my experiences. The work raises a central question: Can I remain in the same space indefinitely?


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Peeling

2024
Peeling delves into the connection between crabs and familial intimacy through cyanotype and video techniques. The crab, symbolizing emotional closeness, is recorded through the peeling process using cyanotype, revealing the complex emotional flow within familial relationships. The piece expresses the complex emotions of both pain and longing present in intimate connections.
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Huling Project

2024
Hanzi spent serveral months conducting on-site creation work in Hulining Town, which is near her hometown of Rui'an City.
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