Jieyi Ludden Zhou on Perfecting Art in Rural China and Finding Home on Beacon Hill
If you've ever read a Pongo Poetry column or two in the South Seattle Emerald, you may have noticed the art that accompanies the impactful words from youth writers. Multimedia artist Jiéyì Ludden Zhou 周杰意 has been a longtime art contributor to the series, depicting the loneliness of a cell or the difficulty of change through their colorful, dynamic illustrations.
Outside of their illustration work for the Emerald, Zhou has explored many different art forms — everything from papermaking to cardboard T. rexes for public dispersals to tattoo flash. Born in Japan, they grew up all over the United States and moved to Seattle in 2016 after receiving their MFA in 4D art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here, you may have seen their work decorating storefronts or their tribute to local queer icons on a signal box on Capitol Hill.
For the past two years, Zhou has mostly relocated to Shanghai, where they are working with and learning art techniques from traditional Chinese folk artists on a cultural ethnography art and fashion project. Specifically, they have spent a great deal of time in places like Danzhai, Guizhou, and other mountain villages that gave birth to Chinese batik, a textile dying technique where wax is applied to fabric, the fabric is dyed in indigo, and then the wax is removed to reveal intricate, delicate patterns. This has culminated in their recent exhibition at the Center on Contemporary Art, East/West Batik and Beyond, cocurated with David Francis, which brought together work from women artists in Western Washington with work from batik folk artisans in rural China. It also featured photography from Lanny Xiuzhu Li and fashion designer Cheng Hao.
We hit up Zhou to chat over Zoom about their creative practice, their connection to Seattle, and the beauty of batik.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What was your earliest memory of making or experiencing art?
My very earliest memory, I think, is when I was in elementary school. After school, I really enjoyed drawing sunsets, and I would draw a bunch of very similar sunsets and be like, 'Do you want to buy this for a quarter?' That was my kindergarten-, first-grade-type vibes, because we lived in an apartment complex, so there was a lot of people in that area. I was friends with my neighbors, because most of us all went to the same school together. I think I am someone where I have felt very moved by art very easily, like, if I especially like installation work, or when I see artwork, I tend to feel it.
Where did you grow up?
I moved around a lot. Growing up, I went to elementary school in Iowa, and I went to middle school and high school in rural Kentucky. I was born in Japan, but neither of my parents are Japanese. My mom is Chinese, my dad is from Ohio. I lived in Seattle from 2016 until 2023. For me, Seattle was the first place I landed after I finished school, and I tried very hard to make Seattle my home. For me, the queer community in Seattle felt like a place where I really grew and blossomed in terms of who I was. But ultimately, what I realized is that what I wanted was to be able to reconnect with my cultural roots. So for the past two years, I have been spending the majority of my time in China, and then I go back to Seattle in the summer.
Do you think that childhood of moving around a lot comes out in your approach to making art, or how you think about it?
Because I moved around a lot growing up, it meant that I had this deep desire for a sense of belonging or a place that was home. Every time someone asked me where I was from, it felt like a really complicated question because I felt like I didn't know where home was and I didn't really feel like I knew where I'm from. What felt the closest to home, in some ways, was my mom's family home in Shanghai. When I was younger, I didn't speak Chinese fluently. My mom's family doesn't even speak Mandarin — usually they speak Shanghainese. The dialect sounds very different from Mandarin, and I don't speak Shanghainese either. And because my dad is American, I don't have Chinese citizenship. I have American citizenship, but I felt like my roots are in China. It wasn't until 2019 that I made my first trip back to China since my grandparents passed, and then at that time I felt like, 'Oh, I actually really need to spend more time here.'
You've illustrated a lot of cool images for the South Seattle Emerald — from fundraiser images to Pongo Poetry backdrops. What really inspires you most when making work about the South End or about Seattle in general?
I used to live in Beacon Hill, so I think that for me, Seattle is where I found my queer community. Even now, I feel like the friends that I have in Seattle are the people who have encouraged me and made me who I am today. I feel like Seattle is the place where I first found my voice and first found my queer chosen family. The South End of Seattle, for me, is the most vibrant part of Seattle. That's where my community is.
A lot of your most recent output are these incredibly intricate batik. I'm curious: When did you first start working in that medium, and what excited you the most?
I started working with batik after I went back to China in 2023. I have been working on a cultural ethnography project, and I was interested in Chinese ethnic minorities, because China has 56 ethnic minorities that are indigenous to China.
I first connected on Chinese social media with a collector of batik, and then I asked if they knew of any place that was still preserving the traditional methods for making it. Then I went to Ninghang Batik and Danzhai. At first, I just went for four days to learn, but I fell in love with that group of women [at Ninghang Batik]; most of them never had the opportunity to go to school. Guizhou is actually the poorest province in China, and it was the last province in China to be lifted out of poverty. The village that most of the women from Danzhai are from is so deep in the mountains, there's no school, there's no hospital. Most of them never even went to elementary school, so they aren't able to read and write.
There are 48 inheritors of Chinese batik, who are at Ninghang Batik, as well as other people who have other kinds of tasks, like taking care of the indigo dye vat. It is a mostly women community. Although none of them, I think, would call themselves feminist, I see women supporting women work because it's their community. When they have kids or grandkids, they raise their kids together. It's not the same kind of working structure that is like a nine-to-five-type job.
What felt most important about creating this bridge between Eastern and Western artists from both Western Washington and rural China in your recent show at CoCA, East/West Batik and Beyond?
So the biggest goal with this Seattle show was I wanted to show people a little glimpse of not just my own batik work that I've been doing and learning [in China], but also bringing the work of my teachers and wanting to share the story of the craftspeople who have been passing on and keeping this batik tradition alive. For me, I think that women's heritage crafts are [important], and I say women even though I don't really identify as a woman. But I think in that space, I feel like they see me as a woman, and I think I'm okay with it. Sometimes I think I just have to put that part of myself aside for a minute.
I wanted to give the incredible women that I have learned from a platform in the closest place to home that I have, which is Seattle. I feel like the power I have is really limited, but if I can, in this lifetime, do something to help preserve and protect women's heritage crafts using my own language. For me, my language is art.
Something I found really interesting about the exhibition was that there was this three-way collaboration on the dresses that were your surface designs. The fashion was done by Cheng Hao and then there was the Ninghang craftswomen who came in and made it. What was it like blending all of that work together? Not only just learning from them, but collaborating?
Cheng Hao has been working with the artisans from Ninghang for almost eight years now. Eight years ago, there was an exhibition of batik work in Beijing that was the Ninghang Batik work in Beijing. And he went to that exhibition, and he felt so inspired and moved by that show. At that time, [Ninghang Batik founder] Ning Manli was there and invited Cheng Hao to come to Danzai and see their space. He went and then he decided to move his studio to Danzhai. So for the past eight years, he has been working with them exclusively.
This past season, I contributed six surface pattern designs. Cheng Hao saw the things that I was drawing, and he was like, 'Do you want to help me draw stuff?' Because he doesn't draw at all. He just makes garments. The thought was that we could do something that both combines and elevates the traditional Miao imagery. For 'Calligraphy of Flight,' because the Miao people don't have a written language, we wanted to use the ancient characters for 'bird' that go as far back as the Oracle bone script [the oldest attested script of the Chinese language]. We wanted to show that the Miao totems or symbols for 'bird' are actually just as ancient as the earliest forms of Chinese writing.
You're based in Shanghai right now. So what's next up on the docket for you?
Other than batik, I am also interested in Nüshu. Nüshu is the only written language in the world that's passed exclusively among women, and it originates in Hunan, China, and Jiangyong County. My teacher is based in Beijing, and we have been working on a project together to preserve and promote Nüshu culture, because at the moment, there are only six people left in the world who are fluent in Nüshu. So this language is actually endangered, and we need more people to be able to access it so that it doesn't die out, because it's a really important component of Chinese feminist history. We're trying to make an IP [intellectual property] character, basically. So there is this sticker emoji pack that we're working on, a children's book, and a mascot character to try and make Nüshu more interesting to young people.
This article is published under a Seattle Human Services Department grant, “Resilience Amidst Hate,” in response to anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander violence.
Help keep BIPOC-led, community-powered journalism free — become a Rainmaker today.
