Bz Zhang 张迪

GIVE FACE 给面子 📍Gibson House, Woodland, California 🗓️ June 26, 2025 – May 26, 2026 A collaborative exhibition by the Yolo County Historical Collection & Bz Zhang Opening Reception on June 26, 5:30-7:00pm 🌱 exhibition announcement! counting down to truly the dreamiest of collaborations with curator Sarah Bartlett @scbartlett_ — together we’ve been wondering aloud how we might tell the stories of Chinese diaspora in North America differently, in other ways, and toward liberatory futures? and, how must we work within archives that are inherently compromised by the systems we seek to unbuild and build anew? GIVE FACE 给面子 is an interdisciplinary exhibition unearthing and regrounding past, present, and future narratives of Chinese diaspora in the Sacramento Valley in the sweeping and ever-expanding story of what we currently call California. Archival objects trace the impact of Chinese Americans on Yolo County through the things they left behind, while contemporary artworks woven throughout the exhibit call our attention to their lived experiences, intimacies, and complexities. Using both documentation and speculation, artist Bz Zhang’s work creates dialog between Western ideas and a Chinese-diasporic cultural inheritance and offers ways to “give face” to (that is, to honor or show due respect for) Chinese ancestors in the US West. The stories of Chinese diaspora in Yolo County and the US West span oceans and continents, and their contributions transcend our infrastructures (from railways to agriculture) into the social and cultural fabric of our nation. Their stories are ours to carry into the shared futures we must build. Artwork pictured: Bz Zhang, Bǎijiā 百家 / 百加 (Hundred Families / Hundred Californias), Cotton, silk, brocade, aluminized fiberglass, 88 x 88 inches, 2025. Constructed in collaboration with David Treuer (Minnesota Ojibwe). @ojibwe_dave

studies for “给面子 gěimiànzi / giving face”; for further reading please see: Ornamentalism by @anneanlincheng ❤️‍🔥

春节快乐! Happy Spring Festival & wood dragon year! 解放巴勒斯坦! Free Palestine! 🌲🐉🧧🍉 @asians4palestinenyc ‘s action from yesterday: “BREAKING…. Asians 4 Palestine NYC surprised Lunar New Year celebrators in Flushing today by disrupting the speeches of Kathy Hochul, Grace Meng, Eric Adams and many local electeds because of their staunch support of Israel during the current crisis in Gaza. We unfurled a banner that read “Ceasefire Now! End the Siege!” in English, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese and loudly chanted pro-Palestine slogans. Protesters also performed a traditional lion dance but with a Palestine flag draped in front of the body. We marched along Main Street while chanting “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and more. Parade goers cheered us on, and some even joined us. Asians throughout NYC are on the side of peace and justice, a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a liberated Palestine!” #freepalestine #ceasefirenow #asians4palestine

At our open mic THIS Sunday, May 3rd @bz.studio will be offering Fire Horse Ab*lish 🧊 prints for sale. They will be available in Tagalog, exclusively made for the Sunday Jump Season Opener, and Simplified Chinese! 🐎🔥 Net proceeds on Sunday will be redistributed to anti-imper*al*st orgs/work as determined by you all - one nomination per print. 📍 Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles, 5-7PM 🎤Open mic sign ups start at 4:30pm. Arrive early to get a taste of all the action, good eats, and support local businesses. 💻Streaming live on Twitch and YouTube - link in bio! #sundayjump #Season14 #HeatRising

happy international workers’ day! all empires will fall! sipain ang ICE! ❤️‍🔥🌱 new ab*lish 🧊 prints in Filipino/Tagalog made specially/lovingly for @thesundayjump this May 3rd! come for the music & food and get your fire horse print while they last! (the Simplified Chinese version will also be available + bonus prints of paintings too) ❤️‍🔥🌱 net proceeds on Sunday will be redistributed to anti-imper*al*st orgs/work as determined by you all — one nomination per print. (DM me if you can’t make it in person, I can set one aside for ya or snail mail) ❤️‍🔥🌱 thank you for all the ways you bring us together @thesundayjump , thank you for the *chef’s kiss* prints always @thisisumico , thank you to all the comrades organizing for the futures we deserve, here with you today and all the days ❤️‍🔥🌱 📸 @ojibwe_dave

The extremely talented and amazing @bz.studio will be at our first open mic of the season THIS Sunday. They will have their art and special pieces made for this show so stay tuned for what they have in store! 🐎🔥 Bz Zhang 张迪 (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, organizer, and educator based in Tovaangar (what we currently call Los Angeles). Across drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations, Bz leverages Western and Chinese-diasporic materials, methods, and archives against each other and themselves, unearthing stories of migration, labor, capital, and empire. Throughout, they work from the vantage point of Chinese diaspora as a collective, pluralistic identity, forging new and renewed solidarities across oceans and borders, to imagine and build shared futures beyond existing systems. Bz is also a licensed architect in California, and in their free time, they look for birds and trash in the Los Angeles River. Join us for our first open mic event of the season on May 3rd from 5-7pm in Historic Filipinotown with the longest running Filipinx open mic space in Los Angeles! Open mic sign ups start at 4:30pm and the event will be 5-7pm. 🎤🎶 Arrive early to get a taste of all the action, good eats, and support local businesses. Streaming live on Twitch and YouTube - link in bio! 💻 For the month of May we commemorate this year in the Chinese zodiac being the Fire Horse. In this rare 60 year cycle, the Fire Horse symbolizes intensity, power, freedom, and transformative energy. Keep this energy of the year and make sure to bring it to this month’s open mic!  #SundayJump #Season14 #HeatRising

I love you, remember? ♥️🌀🌱

second round is just as sweet! grateful for another year with brilliant, incisive, curious, kind, brave students—you who did the challenging, contradictory, imperative work of orienting (orientation = position + direction) our practices as designers (within and without our discipline) and as uninvited guests, diasporic envoys, and humans in this world. what joy and what privilege to have shared time and space together with you for all these days! congratulations on one (more) project within a lifetime’s worth of truth-seeking, dial-moving, sense-making, and drawing forth of new worlds. I am always learning so much from you. ❤️‍🔥🌱 thank you to our guest lecturers @ojibwe_dave , @zannah.mae , @tk_miller for lighting our way, thank you to everyone at @carleton_architecture who held me in community, & thank you to my comrades at @neighborhoodlandtrust for holding it down always. ❤️‍🔥🌱 and thank you, THANK YOU to @o.saloojee for trusting me with another heist(!) and for bringing us all together to unbuild and build new worlds. ❤️‍🔥🌱 student work from HEIST II (ARCS5115 Graduate Option Studio) at @carleton_architecture , winter 2026, in which students were tasked with (1) identifying, researching, and analyzing a settler colonial and/or imperial infrastructure (A Survey), (2) imagining/anticipating a (re)occupation of this infrastructure in the present or near future (An Occupation), and (3) imagining/anticipating a possible return and/or reparative action (A Return). students: Asha Stott, Chloe Maignan, Ella Morkem, Faeza Afrin, Jonathan Robitaille, Kaylee Komatich, Mais Joudeh, Megan Maksymyshyn, Noah Perkins, Simran Kaur, Vanessa Jackson, Zelal Kaya. ❤️‍🔥🌱

can’t wait to learn from these three & see you on Sunday! ❤️‍🔥 “Beyond the Archives: Art, Identity, and the Chinese Diaspora,” hosted by 1882 Foundation and the Yolo County Historical Collection, this Sunday, April 19th, 11am PT / 2pm ET, in Washington DC, Woodland, CA, and on zoom! (link in bio!) Join us for a conversation with Chinese diasporic artists, Bz Zhang, Evelyn Hang Yin, Connie Zheng, and SK Tsang, as they share their current and past work and reflect on how identity shapes the stories we tell. Each artist will discuss how they’ve navigated (or worked outside of) historical institutions and art spaces to create work that challenges inherited narratives and imagines new futures for Chinese diasporic communities in the United States. For those joining in person, the discussion will be followed by an art activity. @yinhangevelyn @yconniezheng @spencyp @1882foundation (“Always Together,” a 1967 cover of “阿里山的姑娘,” was recorded by Shanghai-born Stephen Cheng while visiting Chinese Jamaican musician Byron Lee in Kingston ❤️‍🔥)

two more months(!) to see GIVE FACE 给面子 at the Gibson House in Woodland, California, Patwin lands. Exhibition closes May 26, 2026, and I’ll be there a few more times in person, so give a shout if you find yourself in that wonderful corner of the world! (And if you can’t make it, photos are up on my website!) All my gratitude to curator Sarah Bartlett @pear_of_my_eye & the Yolo County Historical Collection for unearthing these stories together. 🌱🪡 giving face 给面子 in the form of found textile cartography; traditional Chinese patchwork made from souvenir t-shirts — of Chinese diaspora settlements in California, numbering over 200, purposefully displaced, looted, destroyed, and often burned to the ground — silk, brocade, and reinforced with fire-resistant tarp, exhibited on the walls of a Victorian parlor where we would never have been welcome. ______ Bǎijiā 百家 / 百加 (Hundred Families / Hundred Californias) 2025 Cotton, silk, brocade, aluminized fiberglass Constructed in collaboration with David Treuer (Minnesota Ojibwe) @ojibwe_dave The Bǎijiā 百家 quilt (translated as “hundred families”) is a rural Chinese tradition of collecting numerous scrap fabrics from community members to create a quilt for a newborn. The collective process is an embodied practice of creating abundance out of scarcity. Likewise, the Chinese word for “family/families” – jiā 家 – is a homophone for the word “California”—jiā 加 (gaa1/ga in Cantonese) for the first syllable of California. In this Bǎijiā 百家 quilt, diasporic settlements established by Chinese-Americans across California are highlighted through a collection of souvenir T-shirts gathered by the artist and sewn in the bǎijiā quilt pattern to restore the communities affected by systematic erasure.

giving face 给面子 last year to the river we call Merced for now, in Southern Sierra Miwok and Northern Paiute homelands (Yosemite National Park) with @ojibwe_dave ; to the tribes whose kinship with this water will outlive US empire; to the Chinese diaspora imported to cook and clean and build roads (Wawona, Tioga) for gen*cidaires; to all peoples fighting for sovereignty and dignity everywhere; to all those who were met with violence and deserve infinite tenderness forever. ♥️ (sound on for the river💧) — (Giving face) to the river we call Merced for now Single-channel video, color, sound 2 min. 31 sec. 2026

lil 鎮墓獸 tomb-guardian-in-training 🙃🐈🪦 STEEBEE, porcelain and stoneware with glaze, 2026 13 x 6 x 16 inches on view at @sidebitch_la as part of “𝙨𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙯𝙚”through March 29 🐈‍⬛