Consumed (2022)

Diana Zhu’s installation, Consumed, consists of several mixed media elements including a bed with bedsheets covered in stains from Chinese takeout, a video work made up of vintage pornography clips projected onto the bed, and a recorded performance work by the artist displayed on a laptop. Having experienced the traumatizing experience of being exposed to and subsequently obsessively watching porn as a young child, the artist revisits this trauma in this absurd and cheeky installation as a means of rewriting her painful childhood experience. In the video work, Zhu visually and sonically overlays porn scenes from 1990s-2000s that feature Asian women, recalling that pornography was the only form of media where Zhu saw Asian women on the screen. In the recorded performance that plays on the laptop, Zhu sits on the bed while watching her video work and devours American-style Chinese takeout. This frenzied binging refers to cycles of shame and the body as well as stands as a metaphor for the obligatory force-feeding of Americanized images of Asian culture through her childhood.