zhang wei
Testing 2019
In the scientific research project to create the "most beautiful soldier in the new era", will and confidence have become the beliefs of all scientific research groups. This picture shows the inspection team on-site testing and experiencing the latest "non-delay mechanical soldier" model machine and expresses unparalleled confidence and praise to the scientific.
Bio
Born in 1977 in Shangluo, Shaanxi Province, Zhang Wei now lives and works between New York and Beijing.
Selected Awards:
LensCulture Black & White Photography Awards (First Place, 2024); Best Photographer, 8th Jinan International Photography Biennale (2020); Golden Panda Award for Outstanding Photographer, Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum (2019); Nominee, Prudential Eye Awards for Contemporary Asian Art (2016); New Photographer of the Year Award, Xitek (2013); included in the China Photography Annual Ranking (2013); Top 20 Emerging Chinese Photographer Award (2011); Global Times International Young Artist of the Year (2010); Nominee, Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2009); Lishui Photography Award (2009).
Selected Exhibitions:
Solo exhibitions include Theater of Illusions (A2Z Gallery, Paris, France, 2021), Artificial Theater – Act II (O2art, Beijing, 2020), Artificial Theater (ART & PUBLIC + Centre de la Photographie Genève, 2015), and Temporary Performers (6th Lianzhou International Photo Festival, 2010).Group exhibitions include Illusive Masks (Vise International Art Center, Fuzhou, 2024), Monuments of Chinese Photography: 40 Years (Kulangsu Contemporary Art Center, Xiamen, 2023), Darkroom (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2019), Paris Photo (Grand Palais, Paris, 2018), Grains to Pixels (Monash University Museum of Art, Australia, 2016; Shanghai Center of Photography, 2015), AIPAD Photography Show (New York, 2015 & 2016), Beyond Replication (Hannover Art Museum, Germany; White Box Art Museum, Beijing, 2017), as well as the Daegu International Photography Biennale (South Korea), Lianzhou International Photo Festival, First Experimental Image Exhibition (Three Shadows Photography Art Centre), Beijing International Photography Biennale, Istanbul Exchange Exhibition (Turkey), The 55th Venice Biennale (Parallel Exhibition), Ruhr Biennale (Germany), Guangzhou International Photography Biennale, and the Chinese Artists’ Exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
Press:
Zhang Wei’s works and interviews have been featured in The Guardian (UK), Le Temps (Switzerland), The New York Times (USA), WIRED (USA), Francetvinfo (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), Libération (France), and El País Semanal (Spain).
zhang wei
@zhangwei00128
Doll Factory 2019
In the 1950s, a leader from country C, impressed by foreign children’s joy with dolls, used his image to mass-produce toys nationwide. The picture shows the children of officials visiting a doll factory. Although adults might find the factory unsettling, the children view it as an exciting and fun place, seeing the dolls as charming toys rather than objects of fear.
Puppet Archive
Project Statement
In the Puppet Archive series, I explore the blurred boundaries between reality and illusion through re-photography and digital collage. This approach builds upon and deepens the creative methodologies established in my earlier works, Temporary Performers and Artificial Theater.
I collect a vast array of portraits and materials from the real world, carefully reassembling them to create new, surreal images. Each piece is paired with a fabricated storyline, similar to a news caption. This deliberate fiction amplifies the absurdity and falsehood within the imagery, prompting viewers to reflect on how narrative and visuals jointly construct meaning.
By revisiting historical materials—archival images, film stills, classical paintings, and iconic documentary photographs—I reconfigure them into paradoxical pseudo-historical montages. These works expose the constructed nature of public personas and collective memory, suggesting that what we often take as “reality” is repeatedly edited, mediated, and reshaped.
In an era of overwhelming information and rapidly evolving visual technology, media systems continuously produce new illusions of truth. My work aims to trace this unstable structure, revealing the uncertainty beneath seemingly coherent narratives. Rather than offering answers, the series attempts to hold open a space where doubt, imagination, and ambiguity coexist.
From examining individual identity in Temporary Performers, to fabricating hybrid public figures in Artificial Theater, and now to constructing fragmented historical simulations in Puppet Archive, my practice has expanded from the personal to the collective. This evolution reflects a continuous inquiry into how images shape our understanding of history and ourselves—where truth is neither fixed nor singular, but constantly rebuilt and reinterpreted.
Mechanical Dolls 2019
"Ministry of Manpower" is showing two robot children of different generations.
Machinery Expo 2019
The commissioner in charge of procurement was attracted by a second-hand robot called "Promotion Genius" at the Spring Science and Technology Fair.
National Puppet Master 2020
This is the last photo taken by the national puppeteer before he retires. It is a group photo of him and his own puppet empire. At this moment he realized that in fact, they are integrated and he is also one of them.
Factory Settings 2019
For the first time, technicians have carried out the complex settings of re-education, spiritual guidance and ideological transformation for the refurbished robot, which has important guiding significance for the promotion of experiments, education and teaching of human thought implantation in the new era.
Small Theater 2020
The family propaganda team officially launched the “Red Violinist” puppet show tour, bringing entertaining performances to army families. With exciting music, subtle puppet performances, and a captivating storyline, children are unconsciously moved by the revolutionary deeds of the violinist in the play.
Skill Display 2019
Marilyn Monroe smiled awkwardly after seeing an extremely exaggerated copy of herself at the tech expo.
My Sculpture 2019
This is the most questioned and controversial photo of the leader's dedicated photographer. The focus is on the wives of two foreign ambassadors, facing the leader and photographer, they are attracted by the photographer's artistic temperament. The photo was banned soon after it was published, and the photographer has since disappeared from public view.
Warrior 2019
The leader of the main team with the whole team to condolence and sympathy to the robot soldiers who were about to be scrapped. This is a live group photo.