Zan Wang

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces deep blue images by exposing photosensitive surfaces to UV light. Objects—such as plants—placed on the surface create white imprints, preserving delicate details and shadows. This technique captures fleeting moments and natural forms, reinforcing the project’s exploration of capturing presence within absence.

The works investigate in-betweenness, a state of existence between two conditions, spaces, or identities—neither fully one nor the other, but occupying both simultaneously. Here, this manifests as an overlap between here and there, present and memory, space and place/home. Through layered transparencies, the paintings suggest an ambiguous, shared occupation of multiple realities at once.

Drawing from Chinese natural elements, the works incorporate local plants such as bamboo, ferns, and small shrubs from home gardens as cyanotype imprints. These botanical marks, layered and overlapping, create an ephemeral, semi-transparent presence—a ghostly suspension between a nostalgic imagination and the fleeting moments of everyday life experienced elsewhere.