Yesiyu Zhao, Journey to the West, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 69 x 109 inches. 🥀 This work is part of Yesiyu Zhao’s solo exhibition “Journey to the West” on view at David Castillo Gallery in Miami. 🥀 “Journey to the West” unfolds fantastical allegories, sociocultural circumstances, and personal histories layered across the expressive compositions of Zhaos’s paintings. Drawing from the iconographies of traditional Beijing opera and pop cultural adaptations of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, the artist reassembles these nostalgic symbols to form surreal and playful scenes that reflect his own intersecting identities. Locating himself within this work, Zhao’s paintings contend poetically with questions of representation, the positioning of queer people across history, and the treatment of those considered foreign or ‘other’ within the West. The figures represented in the artist’s works inhabit ambiguous and fluid bodies that refuse to adhere to binaries of gender (feminine/masculine), culture (us/them), and time (then/now), proposing ever flexible and freeing possibilities. 🥀 We look forward to Zhao’s solo show with us in Spring 2023! 🥀 @yesiyuzhao #yesiyuzhao Image courtesy the artist and @davidcastillogallery.