His work is an examination of identity, highlighting the difference between inner truth and external perceived identity.

Zihao was born in a city built in mountains in China and grew up in a modern society while surrounded by the beauty of nature. As the unique duality fascinated him, he has a desire to find the link between contradiction and balance.

Duality is always presented in his world: the past is the future, science and theology come from the same source, artificiality is also a part of nature, the external world is the internal world. 

Most of his works use glass as a medium as the glass itself has a duality- like liquid fluidity at high temperature and solidity at room temperature, and also the transparency and opacity.

Those would be a great way to convey his confusion between inner “ego” and external perceived identity.

The ability of glass to distort and transmit light has become his great tool for visualizing his invisible thoughts, and memories.

Selves (2018-)

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Using contrasting colours and materials, I aim to illustrate the struggle and confusion caused by this duality. Through the process of manipulating my physical features, I can constantly reflect on my own objectivity and gain a new understanding of my self-identity.

“I” (2017-)

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“I” is the first work I made unintentionally when I was new to glass art and became the prototype of my later series.

Later, I realized this work is also a reflection of myself. This coloured core represents my virtual self-identification on the sociological side. Those branches and feathers grew around the central core indicate the complexity and wild growth of my thoughts.

The puzzle between internal “ego” and external perceived identity refers to the three constructs in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. There are similarities, but they are not totally the same.

I firmly believe that my soul and mind should not be trapped by any measuring media.

Inversely, they can grow and spread willfully and transcend “me” to infinity, like the sprout of a seed breaking through the shackles of the soil, which grows wildly to become what it truly is.

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As soil is an indispensable environment for the growth of seeds, the invisible thought is always bound by the tangible body.

Although the body is the foundation of the thought, we don't know that thought can exist when the body vanishes.

What binds you will eventually support you, so this work indicates my own dialectical views on restraint and freedom.