Commissioned by
Korax
Makryammos Ephemeral Art Residency
Artist
Peng Zhang
Team
Founder Maria Mitzali
Curator Kim Knoppers
Director Sylvia Sacchini
Date
August – September 2022
The Makryammos Ephemeral Art Residency offers a one-month residency by invitation to an artist or creative practitioner with the opportunity to rest and ruminate, reflect, as well as brainstorm and develop an ephemeral artwork in conversation with the surroundings of the Greek island of Thasos.
The residency will help artists working in the field of ephemerality develop and sustain their creativity without material-object obligations but with an ephemeral output. The resident’s work takes place at the intersection of ephemeral art, nature and craft.
For the first edition of the residency Peng Zhang (China, 1990) was invited. He tries to reconnect to the countryside as it once was through his personal experiences and childhood memories of growing up in the village of Shijian Cun, in the Southern Chinese region of Jinshan Zhen. The fields are his studio, the face of the earth is his canvas, organic substances are his materials, and any old branch is his brush. He therefore proudly calls himself a farmer artist. Currently he is a resident (2021-2023) at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
The choice for the materials Peng Zhang works with is linked to the identity of a place. At Thasos he worked with the famous Thasian white marble and charcoal collected from the recently blackened burned forest at the Ypsarion Mountains in the centre of the island. Inspired by the surroundings and by the local flora and fauna Peng Zhang started working on ten monumental charcoal drawings in different shades of black and gray on the monumental white marble blocks of the pier at Makryammos. The drawings that Peng realized on Thasos could only be seen for two days. Then they slowly fade due to dew and a heavy rain shower. Peng Zhang signed the work with Chinese characters and English words: “Peng Zhang has paid a visit here”, like tourists and day trippers carve their names in cave walls or trees.
