Beichen Zhang

(b. 1993, Shandong)

Beichen Zhang focuses on using the narrative structure of photography to uncover hidden histories, often in the form of prose film, mixed media, and institutional research from the interdisciplinary perspective of archaeology, anthropology, history and art. More recently, he has used a variety of media to question and investigate the relationship between cultural heritage and colonial history in Asia, the shifting of archival and geographical relationships, and the fluidity of identity

In post-colonial contexts. The Untethered Ashes is a narrative film that tells the story of a fisherman living on the Shandong Peninsula, where his ancestors were conscripted by the British Imperial Army to serve on the European front during the First World War. The fisherman becomes possessed by a ghost that travels from the shores of Vancouver Island across the vast Pacific Ocean and still holds fragments of memories of a Chinese laborer. The film depicts fictional encounters across generations on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, paying homage to the laborers floating, entangled in the cracks of history, whose trauma and turmoil still linger in the landscape we inhabit.