A Journal of a Cog
1999-10-7 Sunny
I'm a screw, somewhere here! and I'm a unique screw because I am installed in the building in front of a street. The building is definitely going to break if I am not here. People walk past me every day. I can hear a lot of whispers. I can see fond goodbye. And also I can see there are many tricks from the human world that I don't understand. A dog peed on me the other day, and later, a quarrelsome couple spits at my feet. Of course because I am such an easily noticed cog that I feel great.
A few days ago, I saw the early morning clouds, through a gap in the buildings across the street. Well, it could have been a mountain; I have never moved my position; I don't know if by the end of the building there was a cloud or a mountain. It was extremely early that day when it would be sunrise, not bright, and this was the first time I knew the time. It was at 5:28. A girl told me, and she was the first person who spoke to me. She said that it was not a good day. It is so bad that one could not see clearly whether the sky was clouds or mountains. OK, I must be the best cog, and when I was taken out, I must tell the other cogs that I am the best, most potent cog. I have seen clouds, and I have seen mountains.
1999-10-07
the best cog in the world
This is the description of the art work tool portraits. I created this installation out of objects that are usually hard to be seen in daily lives: cloth hangers, power outlets, light switches, fire alarms, door latches. I know they are supporting roles most of the time, but today they do not need to be like that. Why cannot they become the main characters.
A meditation on the invisible structures that govern contemporary life — how algorithmic logic shapes identity, labor, and the emotional texture of urban existence.
In a city built of concrete and steel, nature no longer appears only as landscape, but as memory, longing, and a quiet force of life growing through the cracks.
Zhiyi Zhang is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist from Jiangsu, China. She received her degree from Parsons School of Design, and works across installation, sculpture, photography, and painting.
Zhang's practice examines alienation, cultural displacement, material embodiment, and the emotional landscapes of contemporary urban life. Having previously worked in the financial industry in Shanghai, she became deeply attentive to the invisible structures of labor and the individuals who exist outside dominant social narratives. Her work often centers on overlooked communities, marginal presences, and forms of life that persist quietly beneath systems of productivity and visibility.
As a member of a generation shaped by transnational education and migration, Zhang draws from both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions while exploring the instability of identity across cultures, languages, and geographies. Her practice reflects a continual negotiation between belonging and estrangement, visibility and disappearance, body and environment.
Material transformation is central to Zhang's work. She approaches clay as flesh, rice paper as skin, and glass as an eye, using material metaphors to investigate vulnerability, perception, memory, and the porous boundary between human bodies and the natural world. Through walking, close observation, and an attention to overlooked organic life such as liverwort, insects, and growth in shadowed spaces, Zhang constructs a visual language of quiet resistance and survival within the urban environment.