Manshee Zheng (b.2002, Beijing, China)

My work investigates the icon as both an aesthetic and ideological construct—how objects, images, and bodies are shaped, consumed, and standardized within networks of mass production and visual culture. From the commodification of domestic forms—tables, doors, shelves—to the fetishization of the female body, I examine how meaning is imposed, and how something becomes a signifier of power, desire, or control. A girl who internalizes the gaze is shaped by it, and ultimately consumed by it becomes an icon in the most literal sense—flattened, circulated, aestheticized, optimized for recognition. The same logic applies to a MacBook folder icon, an image derived from the beige Manila folder, a colonial relic systematized through U.S. bureaucratic expansion and Hollywood’s codification of office culture. What once held physical documents is now a ubiquitous digital symbol—functionally detached from its historical origin, yet continuously reinforcing the structures that produced it. These images feel hyperfamiliar yet inaccessible. I recognize them on my screen, in globalized media, yet I have never physically engaged with them. Their history reaches me only through secondary sources—fragments of digital transmission, algorithmically filtered knowledge, compressed and re-disseminated. The further I trace back, the more the subject disintegrates. This experience is not unfamiliar; I, too, exist as a reference point to be placed, categorized, and questioned. “Where do you come from?” is a demand for context, a request for coherence, an expectation that one’s origin provides a stable narrative. Yet, I reject the premise that history dictates identity. I do not believe I am what I eat; I believe I am what I see.
The logic of selection and control extends to my material choices. My practice operates within rigid, self-imposed parameters—rules that dictate what is included, how it is arranged, and under what conditions it is recognized as complete. Found objects are chosen with precision: mass-produced yet deliberately positioned, generic yet subject to imposed specificity. Their original function is secondary to their capacity to be recontextualized. I work primarily with synthetic, secondhand materials—acrylic, polyester, plastic, manufactured latex, and PVC—not only for their aesthetic and structural properties but also for what they signify. These materials resist decay, embodying the efficiency-driven logic of contemporary production: designed for optimization, and engineered for disposability. They are ubiquitous yet overlooked, seamlessly integrated into daily life, forming the physical and ideological infrastructure of a world that prioritizes surface over substance, and modularity over permanence. They function as both artifacts and evidence—proof of a system that standardizes not only objects but perception itself. 
This extends to my representation of the female body, positioned within an economy of desirability that operates on similar principles of standardization and control. The figures I depict exist within a carefully calibrated threshold—flirtatious yet contained, suggestive without transgressing into explicitness. They embody an economy of near-pornographic aesthetics, optimized for consumption but never allowed to exceed their designated function. They are mirrors of my own desires, my projections, but they are also reflections of a broader mechanism—an algorithmic logic of visibility that dictates how bodies are presented, mediated, and valued. I manipulate them, objectify them, and fetishize them, reinforcing and exposing the conditions that determine their reception. The question is not simply how they are seen, but who determines the framework of visibility itself.
I create because it is the only space in which I can dictate the terms of my own existence. It offers a paradoxical form of autonomy—simultaneously embedded within systems of recognition and able to critique them from within. It is a way to occupy space, to assert worth, to demand visibility on my own terms. In the end, my works become both the medium and the message—embedded within the very structures I analyze, but using them to my advantage, proving that I exist.