ZHANG HANWEN LIULI GLASS
Hanwen is a painter and sculptor living in Chicago, born and grew up in Shanghai, China. She will achieve her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2025. Her work reconstructs fragmented memories, blending reality and imagination to explore the fluid nature of identity and perception. Working with materials that move and resist control, the process mirrors the shifting essence of memory, emotion, and human connection. Through painting and sculpture, she reveals what lies beneath everyday interactions, capturing the tension between presence and absence, intimacy and distance.
Liuli, the material Hanwen works with is an ancient Chinese intangible cultural heritage. It is renowned for its intricate craftsmanship and unique aesthetic appeal. It is crystal-clear, with a warm luster and layered, vibrant colors. Through high-temperature firing, liuli acquires a distinctive transparency and delicate layering, with colors merging in the flames, flowing like water, each piece unique in form yet elegantly fluid. The natural bubbles and subtle color variations give each piece of liuli a distinct character, lively and full of vitality, showcasing a one-of-a-kind artistic beauty. It is not only a refined ornament but also a symbol of Chinese aesthetics, carrying a rich cultural legacy that remains timeless.
The artwork Hanwen will bring to this fair is her Liuli glass series 圆 YUAN. The artist stacks circles of different shapes and sizes together, allowing them to merge and embed into one another, their boundaries gradually blurring until they no longer feel separate. The circle is the most perfect form—without a beginning or an end, seamless and unbroken. In Chinese culture, it symbolizes reunion and completeness, representing harmony and wholeness. On a deeper level, the circle embodies cycles and continuous flow—where the starting point is also the destination, and every ending is a new beginning. It is not just a closed shape but a moving one, symbolizing the endless progression of life, always flowing forward, never stopping.