Zhiqian Wang's films explore how indexical images intersect with language as a symbolic system. Often shot on Super 8, 16mm or assembled from archival footage, she embraces contingency and spontaneity, capturing daily life on the streets through found objects and fleeting encounters with passersby. Floating balloons, fleeting clocks, lens flares through someone’s window, a beetle fell in front of the camera, an abandoned green apple, a lady dressed entirely in pink… This transient, spontaneous imagery embraces random occurrences beyond the filmmaker’s control. On the other hand, in an attempt to explore the relationship between film as an indexical medium of actuality and it as a creative treatment, she utilized language and interpretation of the imagery to experiment with fictional stories that resonate elements of the fantastical. A suicidal green apple; a world conditioned by the human sensory apparatus, but without humans; the complete history flashes through the mind of an old lady in an instant… These characters oscillate between different levels of reality, mediated through image and signs. Likewise, in her installations, a link is established between language and material reality, creating a territory in which different times, places, and histories come into contact-- it is a space that is both real and unreal, where separate worlds momentarily coexist and where interactions become at once logical and illogical.
She recently had solo shows: “Twins, Twilight, and Apple Tree”, “Moonlight of the Twins”, “Red or White Roses” and “Earth and Jerry”, and a two-person show: "Capital Investigation." Her works have also been shown at The Jewish Museum, Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Lenfest Center for the Arts, Hudson River Museum, among others. She had participated in performances at MoMA Ps1, Performa Biennial, Art, Culture, and Technology at MIT among others. Her films had been shown at Tehran International Short Film Festival. She was invited as a guest lecturer in the theoretical computer science department at Harvard University and has collaborated with scholars and researchers in different fields of science. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and has completed residencies at Art Explora × Vila 31 and Art Explora × Cité internationale des arts.