Scar is mounted on the wall of a small, brand-new gallery space in Edinburgh鈥檚 Surgeons鈥� Museums. Because of the way the room is laid out,聽this is probably the last piece you will come to. And that鈥檚 good, as Scar聽offers the perfect coda to Zhang Yanzi鈥檚 solo show A Quest for Healing.
Scar is聽modelled on a surgical bed聽Zhang spotted at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences. (The building itself was where treatments were developed for the bubonic plague, which raged in Hong Kong even into the 20th century.)聽It鈥檚 a violent and terrible cruciform structure, wrapped in bloody bandages 鈥� or at least, that鈥檚 my first impression. I step closer: the 鈥渂lood鈥� is ink made of cinnabar, a vermilion-red pigment traditionally used in Chinese painting. Zhang, one of China鈥檚 foremost contemporary artists, is no stranger to traditional techniques; much of her work has its roots in the artistic and poetic depictions of landscape known as Shan shui
And those 鈥渂loody鈥� smears and stains turn out to be exquisitely detailed miniature scenes of flowing water, framed by 鈥渉illsides鈥� of calligraphy, combining poetry with Zhang鈥檚 private thoughts. What at a distance seemed to be a work about violent medical intervention, becomes, closer in, to be something deeply personal, calming 鈥� even kind.
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The stereotypical view of contemporary art is that it鈥檚 too clever for its own good and heartless with it, constantly tripping the unwary viewer into moments of horrified realisation (ever looked closely at a Grayson Perry pot?) Zhang鈥檚 work pushes in the opposite direction. In the centre of the gallery, an outsize felt-covered 鈥渂roken heart鈥� 聽is pierced with thousands of acupuncture needles. This is shocking enough, but only until the eye adjusts and you realise that those pins 鈥� so fine, and so many 鈥� are more likely cushioning the heart from further assault.
Pills and pathos
A Quest for Healing is not a sentimental show. Several pieces聽convey a powerful sense of human fragility. The most colourful piece here is also the most daunting: a wall-mounted pyramid of medical blister packs, their pills removed and replaced by strips of paper on which schoolchildren 鈥� thousands of them 鈥� have inscribed their prayers and wishes for the future. The weight of expectation borne by Wishing Capsules聽(pictured above) feels positively oppressive.
Then there are the linked drawings of Limitless, filling one wall with exquisitely drawn ants 鈥� half living things, half calligraphy, massing like clouds of stars. You can鈥檛 separate these聽tiny figures from each other, but then again,聽 you can鈥檛 write the聽whole lot off as a mere texture, either.
There鈥檚 a clever perspectival game being played in this show: our cosmic insignificance is a given, but our complexity demands that we press ourselves against each other, in an effort to understand.
Artists who dabble in medicine are a dime a dozen. Zhang is different. She鈥檚 steeped in this imagery, growing up in Jiangsu Province in the 1970s, playing with her doctor father鈥檚 stethoscope. While by no means rejecting Western medicine, Zhang makes us aware how much more effectively the Chinese tradition聽gets聽us to think about mortality, and time, and the nature of being a material body: yearning, growing, dying.聽And the work that results from all this? A Quest for Healing is, simply, the most humane art about medicine I have seen in years.
A Quest for Healing runs at聽, Edinburgh, to 4 November
Zhang Yanzi鈥檚 companion show,聽, runs at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath until 12 November
