“Growing up in a multigenerational family in southern China, I was immersed in cultural traditions that emphasize familial bonds and rituals surrounding life and death. These early experiences continue to shape my understanding of dress as an emotional vessel—one that carries memory, intimacy, and continuity across time.”

Affect theory suggests that bodily responses, such as goosebumps triggered by music or a painting, are immediate, physical reactions experienced before the mind has a chance to label them. The body is thus seen as an open system, constantly reacting to its environment. In this context, objects become more than mere representations; they are sites of affective encounters capable of shaping new aesthetic landscapes. Contemporary artists such as Louise Bourgeois, who used the “very fabric of the body” to transform intimate memory into universal language, and Rei Kawakubo, whose autonomous objects shift the garment from a functional tool to a symbolic site reflecting cultural significance, exemplify this approach. By utilising material and the body, these artists bridge philosophical concepts with tangible, practical experiences. Similarly, New York-based Chinese artist and fashion designer Anna Zhang explores how garments act as carriers of memory and continuity across generations.

In To You, After All Time (2025), Zhang visualizes grief as an ongoing process. Inspired by private acts of mourning and traditional Chinese funeral culture, she uses materials that hold narratives, allowing material gestures to function as sensitive objects. Here, the material itself is a holder of affect, capable of activating an inherited bodily response even decades after a specific event. Centred on the artist's personal journeys with grief, particularly her grandmother's passing, the project adopts a restrained visual language, linking material austerity to the ongoing process of mourning. Through retained silhouettes, subdued color schemes and layered construction, the artist tells a story of affective potentiality, where garments become sensitive objects that trigger visceral, non-verbal responses. By maintaining abstraction, Zhang avoids overt autobiography, creating a contemplative emotional space where viewers can engage with their own memories.

“Subtle shifts in proportion, tactile surfaces, and muted tonal palettes create tension between protection and exposure, allowing garments to act as narrative carriers rather than purely aesthetic objects,” the artist explains.

In Zhang's practice, a sense of reactive vulnerability emerges, allowing the body to remain in a state capable of empathy and sustained reflection. This approach touches on the concept of “worlding", the idea that objects (like the items in a wardrobe) are ingrained in us pre-reflectively from an early age. When Zhang relies on specific visual cues, she is not only making aesthetic choices but also consciously "worlding": bringing together materials that call for each other and resonate with a viewer's pre-theoretical conception of the world. By creating a language that transcends words or traditional means of communication, the artist positions garments and fashion within the space of fine arts, connecting her own childhood experiences and cultural symbols to broader discourse about “absence, temporal suspension, and the persistence of emotional bonds beyond physical presence”.

In Zhang's upcoming project, she progresses from highly personal narratives into shared emotional structures, enabling individual memory to expand into a contemplative emotional space. Zhang achieves what many contemporary textile artists struggle with, transforming a deeply personal emotion into a fine art language that avoids sentimentality and instead allows for more emotional accessibility. By deliberately moving beyond the autobiographical, Zhang uses material as conductors of memory, on a personal and collective level, positioning her art discourse within the Venice Biennale tradition of affect-driven material investigation.

“In this new body of work, I am intentionally moving beyond highly personal narratives toward a more universal visual language—one capable of evoking shared emotions and collective memory. The project seeks to transform early emotional states into forms and materials that invite broader resonance, allowing individual memory to expand into a communal visual story.”

Through her practice, Zhang demonstrates that dress and fashion are more than just functional objects; they are mediums for emotional resonance. Her upcoming project, which explores childhood through Eastern symbols, signals a deepening investigation into how material can express what language cannot, expanding textile art's ability to carry collective emotion beyond individual autobiography.

Learn more about the artist here.

Cover image:

To You, After All Time, 2025. Single-channel animated video, sound. 1 minute 57 seconds short film, looped. By Anna Zhang. Photographed by Tiann Qi