Unimagined (2020-21)
Zikun Feng is a Chinese, London-based photographer interested in urban landscapes and the impact of socio/economic conditions. He has a BA in international relations and is studying MA Photography at Kingston School of Art.
In a new body of work Unimagined, Feng has created a series of conceptual images that deconstruct daily life under COVID-19 and reflects upon his emotions during the pandemic. Photographing in a studio and in his lived environment Feng focuses on props related to PPE such as face masks, hand gloves and sanitisers. This work has been created under the pressure and restrictions of endless hours and days behind closed doors in domestic environments. Feng says, “my fear of the virus transformed me into a state of numbness, irritability, insecurity, boredom and discomfort.”
The epidemic is deconstructing daily life. Life as we knew it, social and racial structures, ideologies, established orders are all being dismantled and reconstructed and survival has become the new center of life. The contradictions and tensions between entertainment, work, family and career have been replaced by security and freedom, between self-enclosure and social needs, between rationality and sensibility.
In Unimagined, Feng expresses his ambivalent emotions by enlarging these contradictions: the protection of masks versus the masks physical discomfort; needs and fears of other individuals and our dependence on information versus our skepticism about authoritative propaganda. Feng also raises broader questions through images: Which is more important, safety or freedom? Has the epidemic changed our how we value life? When daily life becomes no longer daily, what has it become?