Member Spotlight: Wenran Zhao

Interviewed on June 28, 2024, 3:04PM

NMC
Thank you for being here with us. Who are you? Where are you currently located?

Wenran Zhao
My name is Wenran Zhao, I also go by Karli. I am currently located in Providence, RI where I did my MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, focusing on digital media. For most of my artistic career I was mostly focusing on digital media and computational art. I just graduated and I’m going to move to Boston temporarily to be a teaching coach at an MIT summary Camp. I’m very excited about it. Starting from September, I am going to join Hunter College and teach more traditional media. I’m really excited about it.

NMC
That’s amazing.
What can you tell us about the journey that brought you there? What brought you the digital media?

Wenran Zhao
I went to a College in Hong Kong for my undergrad. It was an introduction to all sorts of digital media technology and techniques, so I learned 3D animation and audio editing, that kind of media production stuff, which I thought at that time was really fun. When I was a junior, I was introduced to computational media and algorithmic art and programming and how we can make art from code, which I thought was just so interesting. That’s why I applied to the MFA program at RISD. My previous artworks in my undergrad were mostly purely digital, which I thought was really awesome, but then I wanted to explore this more physical and tangible aspect of my work. That’s how I started to engage more with tangible materials at RISD, like textiles, wood, clay, found objects. I feel like this bridging of the two worlds, the digital and the tangible world, for me is really interesting.

NMC
What does new media mean to you?

Wenran Zhao
I’m interested in the idea of media as mediation and I think media art for me is the art form that gives meanings to mediators and mediations. So they focus on things that sort of mediate art experience in the world and that haven’t been interpreted or expanded, or conceptualized or confronted in the past.

NMC
What brought you to the new media caucus?

Wenran Zhao
I think the New Media Caucus is an awesome platform. I think a friend of mine introduced it to me. When I was an undergrad and then at the very beginning of the MFA, I felt really devastated being a new media artist. Being in the art school, you know, new media is not so much considered as a strong art form, yet. A lot of my friends who also worked with new media art were struggling.

So then when my friend introduced me to new media caucus’ platform, I was like, whoa, this is really awesome. I actually got the Hunter College job through looking at one of the posts from New Media Caucus. People also share each other’s work and thoughts, and there are open calls, it helps me so much. I think it’s definitely one of the platforms that centers on new media that I follow the most. I really appreciate this platform.

NMC
What does receiving the 2024 Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award mean to you?

Wenran Zhao
It means a lot. As a recent grad who has been in the new media field for a couple years, but everything is still new to me, it me feel more comfortable and confident in my own art practice. It encourages me to develop my own artistic language that is distinct from the current art scene. I think a lot of young artists like me also struggle a lot while they’re pursuing their degree or in their very early career to find a job and get their work out there. So for me, this award really strengthened my belief in my own work and really encourages me to pursue this passion.

NMC
What current projects are you working on?

Wenran Zhao
I was working on the series of projects that are centered on text and textiles.
Those series were shown at my thesis exhibition, at RISD. This series of works is thinking about how textiles and text share the same root, and the idea of ‘to weave’ is ‘to speak’. I have always had an interest in poetry and concrete poetry. I’m interested not only in the content but also the forms of poetry, so it’s a series of work that incorporates projection of concrete poetry, but it’s also interactive. There are visuals moving onto textile pieces and the textile pieces are either knitted, or woven, or have embroidery on them, and they are embroidered or knitted with conductive materials. Once you make the circuit right, they become like a capacitive sensors and when you touch them they trigger little signals so the projection will move accordingly. The idea is that through touching my pieces you activate the scene where text and textiles becomes an integrity.

I’m really interested in expanding this whole series. I’m thinking deeper on the relationship between text and textiles and how textiles are such an important component in how we document history and form narratives that are is always kind of ignored in human history. I think through this series of work I want to draw people’s attention to this more tactile and tangible and nonlinear aspect of narrative.

NMC
You where can people see or work?

Wenran Zhao
Most of my work are documented on my website, https://theunthoughts.com/