Jasphy Zheng is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the invisible structures shaping everyday life: beliefs, rituals, and unspoken rules that quietly govern how we relate to one another. Through participatory frameworks involving both objects and non-objects, she creates situations where meaning emerges through collective presence and negotiated interaction. Her projects often begin with a simple prompt or invitation and unfold into temporary collectives, subtle exchanges, or open-ended improvisations. Centering language, agency, and care as core materials, her practice resists fixed outcomes in favor of shared attention and relational complexity. Zheng holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I didn’t grow up with formal art training, and for a long time I never imagined becoming an artist. I came to art around the age of eighteen, during a period of existential upheaval following the loss of a mentor I deeply admired. At the time, it felt necessary to change my life’s direction in order to hold and move through that grief.

Around that same period, I encountered artworks that profoundly shifted me. They didn’t simply impress me aesthetically, they unsettled my values and moved me emotionally. They showed me that art has the capacity to reshape how we see and relate to the world at a fundamental level. Art felt non-derivative, something foundational to human experience rather than an industry or a role.

For the first time, I could imagine committing myself to a single pursuit over many lifetimes. I decided to become an artist not because it felt appealing or adventurous, but because it felt necessary.

How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

I don’t really think of my practice as relying on inspiration in the sense of sudden flashes or moments of genius. For me, art is a socially grounded practice, so it’s inevitably shaped by everyday life and by how we relate to the world around us.

If one stays curious, about others, about systems, about oneself, there are always reflections, opinions, tensions, or questions that naturally arise. Those become the starting point for my work. Motivation comes less from waiting to feel inspired and more from paying close attention: to conversations, to misunderstandings, to small shifts in how people speak, listen, or relate to one another. Making work for me is responding to what is already present.

Your practice often engages with the “failure of communication.” What led you to explore these moments of misunderstanding and what they reveal?

If I’m honest, my interest in the failure of communication comes from a constant struggle to feel connected, to feel understood and seen by others, especially by the people I love and care about. It’s perhaps one of the most fundamental needs we share, yet it’s often far more fragile than we expect.

Communication, understanding, empathy—all of these require effort, vulnerability, and a willingness to risk misunderstanding, and even then, success is never guaranteed. Dzongsar Rinpoche once said that there is no such thing as communication, only successful misunderstandings and unsuccessful ones.

Moments of misunderstanding reveal how much care and labor are required to stay connected, both to ourselves and to others. I’m drawn to these moments as sites where intimacy, power, and longing become visible. My work reflects on how connection is constantly negotiated, and how easily it can slip into misalignment, silence, or failure, often without us noticing until something is at stake.

In that sense, the “failure” of communication isn’t a dead end for me, it’s where the emotional and relational truths of human experience begin to surface.

How do you approach exhibiting your work? What are your goals when showing your art in public spaces?

I’m not a studio-based artist, most of my works are site-specific. They’re created in response to the physical space, cultural context, and the institutional or structural conditions of exhibition spaces, whether those are museums, galleries, alternative spaces, or public sites.

When I begin envisioning a work, I’m already thinking about how it will be encountered, how it might be perceived, navigated, or even interacted with in a particular context. The exhibition isn’t a container for the work, it’s part of the work’s logic.

My goal in showing work publicly is modest but demanding: I hope the work might spark curiosity, or better yet, interrupt the automatic process through which assumptions form, even if that interruption appears as discomfort or confusion. It’s a big goal, and I can’t believe I’m saying it out loud, but I’ve experienced artworks that have done this for me, and that keeps the possibility alive.

How do you hope audiences encounter the project—as readers, contributors, witnesses, or something else?

I enjoy creating projects with multiple roles, where boundaries remain fluid and open to reexamination. In my work, there are first audiences, second audiences, contributors, participants, but also witnesses, guardians, believers, and doubters (or critics). Each role is essential, and together they give the work its complexity and texture.

These roles often shift between the audience, the hosting institution, and myself. I’m deeply interested in this triangular relationship and the power dynamics it produces, how authority, authorship, and responsibility circulate rather than remain fixed.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

I’m currently developing several new projects. One is a situational work that explores proximity, how physical closeness frames and alters relationships between individuals. Proximity is a slippery condition that sits between strangeness and familiarity, producing a façade of intimacy or distance shaped by temporary binding and shared circumstances.

Another project I’m excited about responds to the classic psychological test of the tree, the house, and the person. It aligns closely with my interest in self-reflection and the paradox of the self as both the most familiar and the most elusive figure we know. The project asks: what is the self, who is the self, and how willing are we to truly get to know it? And perhaps more importantly—are we capable of doing so?

Over the past two years, I’ve also gone through a phase of experimenting with new mediums and learning the “languages” of each, somewhat ironic given my long-term interest in immaterial forms of making. I have a bad habit of needing to try something fully before deciding to reject it.

Moving forward, I feel confident trusting myself to adopt whatever medium a project calls for, without feeling the need to commit to any single form. What matters most to me is staying responsive to questions, to contexts, to the spaces between people where meaning quietly takes shape.

Text & photo courtesy of Jasphy Zheng

Website: http://jasphyzheng.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasphy/?hl=en