Zengjie Chai — CalArts Post Grad Show Y25

Zengjie Chai

(Art MFA 25)
https://zengjiechai.com/
the water in me, and aqua, 2024 – 2025

Zengjie Chai’s the water in me uses the process of carbonating seawater as a metaphor for queer code-switching across different social and cultural contexts. The single-channel video installation explores how a queer diasporic body navigates between authenticity and conformity, between China and America, between different versions of self demanded by heteronormative structures. Working autobiographically through queer autotheory, Chai uses the physical transformation of water — made effervescent, kept sparkly — to visualize the pressure and performance required to move through these worlds. The addition of sparkle — of extra, of performance — becomes necessary for survival. The painting behind the viewer, aqua, pushes these notions of ambiguity, of existing in between — in between spaces, in between positions, in between performances — through experimentation with a range of gradients. Both the painting and the video’s durational use of mixed language without translation emphasize Chai’s position in spaces where code-switching becomes both survival strategy and chimeral bubbling.

PROXY CHIMERA ORACLE

CalArts 2025