Zaneta Zou
Bio
My name is Jiaoe Zou, and my preferred name is Zaneta as it means the gift of God. I am a senior student at the University of Toronto and study Arts Management and Studio Art. I am from Shenzhen, China and my hobbies include traveling and photography. I enjoy traveling as it can make me relax and broaden my insight. Photography can record my life and I felt satisfied when I take perfect photos.
Overlapping in a Moment of Memory
"Beginning to End"
The purpose is to commemorate special days and the numbers above are the two dates that mean a lot to me. It represents the day we spent together and the day I left Toronto. The elements in this picture are the seaside scene and bouquet from our first day together. It includes the plane that flew me back to Toronto, the parting bouquet, the calendar and the screenshots of counting down the days until we meet. Some elements are outside and inside the circle because I wanted to express how the inside of the circle were the memories before parting ways while the edge of the circle is what happened after my boyfriend and I parted. I chose the blue background color because it represents the color of the sea.
"Sense of Ritual"
I wanted to express a personal response. The photos of these flowers were taken when I received them. We had a pact, a promise to me that there would be no shortage of flowers. It was a very ritualistic thing for me, and I was impressed. I made a new bouquet of the many flowers I received and added the hand to express how precious these flowers were and how I will give the same love back to him. The background changed to an old paper and a layer of fuzzy filter paper was added onto the flowers to express that although these flowers existed, they have disappeared.
"Distance"
This is proof that we are in a long-distance relationship. I created a map of China with all my travelling tickets because we met each other in China and experienced everything there. For the background, I used a corkboard and added sticky notes to remind myself of these memories. This effect was to also make the map look like I was cutting and pasting things onto the board.
My thoughts are like being sealed in a plastic bag
The theme of my work is inspired by my current situation to make projects about anxiety. "My thoughts are like being sealed in a plastic bag" as the title to convey my anxiety state through photos.
The first and the second are to convey that my current situation is due to my studies and the epidemic, and I have been staying at home. I really want to go out, but I am always held back by all kinds of homework and trivial matters, which makes me rarely go out. This is also a source of anxiety for me. So I took two photos of being trapped at home and wanting to escape. The third one is a red picture with a lens filter. I chose red to imply that my mental state is very bad during anxiety, and the lens is more like my eyes, in order to show that everything I see is It seems so. The fourth one is a light-leaking picture, and I added a special effect of smearing, which seems like a dream, and I walked alone in the dream and felt very lonely. The fifth picture shows the state of confusion of my thoughts, and the constantly radiating thoughts are presented to me, but they are not sure. The last one was shot around the title of the whole work, "My thoughts are like being sealed in a plastic bag", to express my struggle against anxiety.
