Christea Zhao Nian is a Chinese emerging artist who now lives and works in Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. Coming from a background in filmmaking and critical writing, Zhao has written, directed and screened several short films and documentaries, and worked as a digital editor for international art magazine LEAP based in Shanghai. Since emigrating to Australia, her practice has expanded into performance, video and text-based work. She has exhibited and screened her works at Kings ARI, The Capitol and Hopkins Creek Festival. She is currently finishing her Masters of Fine Art at RMIT.
Zhao’s practice centres around the themes of loss and melancholia through live performance, video installation and text-based work. Language, spoken narrative and shared-listening is crucial in her works. She unearths narratives from her personal history, collective memory to investigate various forms of loss both material and conceptual. Zhao is interested in integrating live performance with performance-oriented video and sound in order to perpetuate the disappearing body. In this way, she seeks to evoke the prolonged psychic existence of the lost object during the psychological state of melancholia. The possibility/impossibility of mourning and comprehension frequently lies beneath her practice.