Yibei Zhang (b.1992, born in Heilongjiang, China) lives and works in Beijing. Graduated from RoyaCollege of Art MA Fine Art (Sculpture) 2017 and University of Arts London, Wimbledon College otArts - BA Fine Art (Sculpture) 2015. Yibei has won 2019 Tomorrow Sculpture Awards and shortlisted by Huayu Youth Award in 2021. She is also the recipient of Longlati Foundation's Artist-in-Residence Program for the 2022-23 cycle. Her recent exhibitions include: solo exhibition “A Vase lnEverything"(BANK/MABSOCIETY, Shanghai, 2021): “Triennial 2023 Home ls Where the Haunt ls(X Museum, Bejing, 2023);“BODILY REACTION: VITALIZING THE BARE LIFE (Taikang Space, Beiiing, 2023).“The Disconnect Generation" (Song Art Museum, Beijing, 2022), “Wisdom of EverydaLife-Contemporary Art lnvitation Exhibition"(Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, Yinchuan2021), “The 4th Today's Documents " (Today Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2019),“Whatever WorksWhatever lt Takes" (Goethe lnstitut, Beijing, China, 2019), etc. Her artworks have been collected byimportant insitituions, including Song Art Museum, Longlati Foundation.
Yibei Zhang starts with a proposition, that is, a rethinking of the relationship between artist, material and ideation. In this rethinking, the artist and her materials form the entity world and theentity world frames the ideation world; ideation and material together compose the imagery oithe artist and this imagery leads, chicken and egg-like, to the collaboration of artist and materialMaterial, artist and ideation are therefore fated to co-exist. What then is material and who is theartist? Where is ideation? We might deem that the artist picks her material, be it stone, silicon orthings that exist in the world (found or sought obiects), because she combines her materials asreference obiects to her subconscious. This poses for Yibei the question of whether the materiabelongs to the artist or vice versa, i.e. relative to material, the artist is moved and relative to theartist, the material is moved.