Jacob Zhicheng Zhang

PhD Candidate
jacobzhicheng.zhang@mail.utoronto.ca

Campus

  • Downtown Toronto (St. George)

Fields of Study

  • Aesthetics
  • Queer theory
  • Post-colonialism/Decolonization
  • Modern/Contemporary
  • East Asian
  • Diaspora

Areas of Interest

  • East and Southeast Asian art since the twentieth century
  • Asian North American art since the twentieth century
  • Global art education histories
  • Sinophone studies
  • Theories of gender and sexuality
  • Theories of aesthetic autonomy and politics

Working Dissertation

Title

Crafting Difference: Transnational Subjects and Liberal Frameworks in Art Education since the 1980s

Supervisors

Yi Gu

Biography

Jacob Zhicheng Zhang is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. His research examines the intersections of art education, aesthetic autonomy, and difference in the context of transnational contemporary art across North America, Western Europe, and Sinophone Asia since the 1980s.

In addition to his academic work, Jacob is a Berlin-based writer and translator who has contributed to art periodicals in China and Germany. His curatorial and collection-based research as well as conservation assistance has supported exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art. His writings have appeared in Artforum.cn, ArtReview China, The Art Journal (formerly The Art Newspaper China), Berlin Art Link, Synoptique: Journal of Moving Image Studies, Rutgers Art Review, and various exhibition catalogues.
 

Selected Publications

  • “‘Distance of Ambivalence’ in Persona Performance: How Tseng Kwong Chi Appropriates the Mao Suit.” Rutgers Art Review, vol. 40, 2024, pp. 105–124.
  • “Two Comparative Studies: Repositioning the Work of Antoni Starczewski.” Zeszyty Artystyczne, no. 39, 2021, pp. 146–157.
  • “Chongshen ‘shaoshu’: ping hengtaier yapu de shaoshu zhongguo | ARTFORUM shuping” [Reexamining ‘minority’: review of Minor China: Method, Materialisms, and the Aesthetic by Hentyle Yapp | ARTFORUM book reviews]. Artforum, 04 September 2024.
  • “Book Review: Maud Lavin, Yang Ling, and Zhao Jing Jamie, eds. 2017. Boy’s Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Hong Kong University Press.” Concordia University: Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2020, pp. 132–136.
  • “Robert Adams.” Material Meanings: Selections from the Constance R. Caplan Collection, edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky, Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press, 2020, pp. 30–33.

Honours, Awards and Grants

  • Fall 2024 CAA Terra Foundation Travel Grant, Terra Foundation for American Art and College Art Association
  • Fall 2024 W. Bernard Herman Graduate Scholarship in Art History, University of Toronto
  • 2023–2024 Mark Gayn Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto
  • 2022–Present Connaught International Scholarship for Doctoral Students, University of Toronto
  • 2022 Leonore V. Kinghorn Scholarship, University of Toronto

Professional Affiliations

  • Association for Chinese Art History
  • College Art Association

Education

MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019
BA, Colby College, 2016

Presentations

“Exhibiting ‘Chinese Female Artists,’ Permeating Sounds, and Cosmopolitanism.” Sinophone Europe, University of Florence, 13–14 December 2024.
EcoTechnics Improvised: Activating Politics in Global Media Art, University of Toronto (with Timothy Murray, Wang Yung-Lin, and Elizabeth Wijaya), 22 March 2024.
“Zheng Shengtian and the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1985.” UAAC/AAUC Annual Conference, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, 19–21 October 2023.
“A Diasporic Artist’s Performance of Passing: Dissecting Tseng Kwong Chi’s Appropriation of the Mao Suit.” Translating Home: Views from the Diaspora, the 12th Annual Rutgers Art History Graduate Student Symposium, Rutgers University, 22 April 2022.
“Not Tongzhi: The Dialectic between Chinese Photographer Ren Hang and the ‘Chinese Homosexual.’” Narratives of (Il)legibility in East Asia, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 5 May 2018.

Administrative Service

Film Talks Co-Organizer, The Fantastical and the Real: 2023 East Asian Film Talks, 2023
Speaker Series Co-Organizer, Domestic art galleries in Cuba, Russia, and China after 1989: a(n) (imagined) trans-socialist network, 2023
Co-Editor-in-Chief, The Wollesen: University of Toronto Art Journal, 2022–24
Symposium Co-Organizer, Contretemps: The 10th Annual Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium, University of Toronto, 2022–23
Symposium Co-Organizer and Panelist, Reminiscing/Reinventing Graduate Conference, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018

Cohort

  • 2022-2023