Unconscious Footprints

“Unconscious Footprints” is not a preconceived concept, but a trace that naturally emerges from the constant accumulation of time, experience, and reality. It records the artist’s ongoing relationship with the times, with nature, and with himself at different stages. Those seemingly casual footprints are precisely the proof that creation truly takes place, and also the starting point toward the future.

Looking back on my early works, I often feel they were more like “unconscious footprints.” Against the backdrop of rapid social change, urban renewal and new rural construction advanced almost simultaneously. Familiar streets were demolished, fields re-planned, and new landscapes quickly took shape, while many once-real scenes retreated deep into memory.

At that time, I did not deliberately judge the meaning of these changes. I was only strongly drawn to them, compelled to record and gaze. Creation in that period was more like an instinctive response—a remembrance of what was fading and a reflection on the present. The images no longer pointed to a single reality, but wandered between memory and consciousness, leaving echoes of an evolving era in a surreal visual structure.

As time went by, my gaze gradually shifted from the grand landscape of the times to the world around me. I began to focus on more ordinary and concrete existences: the rich and complex ecosystem of Mount Tianmu, the slow-flowing moments of life in a courtyard. It is these seemingly trivial things that led me to rethink the relationship between humans and nature. How we should coexist with nature, and how to maintain restraint and respect in symbiosis, have become questions I continue to explore.

For me, creation is a slow and honest form of observation. These “unconscious footprints” are both traces left by the times and projections of personal life experience. It is through such walking and looking back that art gradually reveals its true direction.

ChongZhang Zhou