p r a x i s
I make myths. Through them, reality is made, unmade and remade. These narrative meta-structures shape the self, braid past, present and future, binding us to each other and the world.
My practice began in personal mythology — interrogating memory, testing and rewriting it. That inquiry scaled outward. A city’s myth. Then, as ghost of a world yet to be, the ancient idea of Nusantara and the current Southeast Asian imaginary interwoven with anthropocenic anxiety and alternate futures we might yet inhabit.
Process-wise, I straddle the digital, the mechanical and the handmade, each with its own capacity for accumulation, error and revision, like the myths themselves.
The complexity that characterises my work is more than style. It is method: Entangled dualities, quantum and superstring theories, Halberstam’s “silly archive” — frameworks where contradictions sit unresolved.
Threading through these, an abiding scepticism of memory’s reliability explored through an ongoing parallel body of work.
w o r k s
7 elements >
topologies of loss >
naming our bright & dark stars >
the city & the city >
twilight states >
new flesh >
stygian suite >
a b o u t
Ren Zi was conceptualised in 2004, though it took nine years — and a Kickstarter campaign — for their first public showcase to materialise in 2013.
Their practice interrogates how myth shapes the perception of reality, on both the individual and societal scale — rooted in philosophical idealism, the Taoist concept of entangled dualities and Jack Halberstam’s “silly archive”. Feeding the work: Folktale and speculative fiction, mecha anime and spandex-hero exploits, Asian melodrama and a syncretic amalgam of Buddhism, Catholicism and socialism absorbed in their formative years.
Having assumed the mantle of ghost of a world yet to be, Ren Zi’s current focus explores alternate realities in the context of climate change and Southeast Asia.
An autodidact, they credit their art education to Art for Dummies and YouTube. Though given the mythopoeic nature of the practice, the veracity of that claim should be taken with some scepticism.
c o n t a c t
For curatorial, acquisition or commission enquiries, email reach.renzi@gmail.com.
For brand and commercial collaborations, I’m represented by GroundFire. Contact Michelle Lim at michelle@groundfire.live.