HI ~*
I’m Zoe, nice to meet you ~* Thank you for being here
Growing up, home often felt loud and chaotic. There was love, but also generations shaped by survival — grandparents marked by war and regime change, and parents who immigrated in search of a better life.
I learned early to seek worthiness through achievement, believing peace and happiness existed somewhere beyond the next accomplishment — the next line added to the CV. Working in fashion and art direction, I found myself surrounded by beautiful things, yet I WAS completely numb and disconnected. In search of peace, I rented out my apartment and left for the mountains. I slept in hammocks, swam in creeks and rivers, lived out of my car with my dog, and watched light dance between the shadows of the trees.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe again. Nature asked nothing of me except presence AND INTENTION. I began to understand that peace wasn't waiting for me beyond the next accomplishment. It was in the moments I breathed a little deeper, when my body felt safe enough to soften, and I allowed myself to simply be.
My work is an extension of that remembering. Through sculptural mixed media, I explore beauty as a feeling of presence and the spaces in between — light and shadow, stillness and movement, transformation and becoming, earth and ether. I am drawn to the quiet intelligence of nature and how, in moments of presence, the ordinary becomes quietly transcendent.
I create to offer a piece of that stillness back to a world that often moves too quickly — A moment to pause, to breathe a little deeper, and loosen our grip on the inherited stories of who we need to become. A quiet reminder that Mother Nature never rushes, yet everything becomes.
With love + intention,
Zoe
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Zoe Zhou is a Los Angeles - based Chinese American multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the spaces between earth and ether — drawing from nature, memory, and the unseen rhythms that shape our experience of the physical world.
Before developing her fine art practice, Zhou spent over a decade working across fashion, styling, and art direction, contributing to styling and fashion teams across projects for artists such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga. Working alongside artists and makers across many disciplines gave her an intimate understanding of material, construction, and the details that give an idea physical form. This experience continues to inform her exploration of material, movement, beauty, and craftsmanship.
Working primarily through dimensional mixed-media painting, Zhou combines acrylic with sculptural, found, and repurposed materials to create tactile works that move between earth and ether — the material and the unseen. At the center of her practice is an exploration of beauty as a feeling of presence. Through light and nature, Zhou considers the moments when awareness deepens and the ordinary becomes quietly transcendent.
