Lucy Zhang

Memories on Ginkgoes - Lucy Zhang Ginkgo leaves, thread, acrylic on plexiglass, fishing line, flashlights
Approx. 9’ x 8’ x 3.5’

This installation explores my relationship with the ginkgo tree, which used to grow in my family’s courtyard and now grows on my mind. It consists of suspended paintings on plexiglass which depict both personal and generic, real and imagined stories from my family where ginkgo trees have been present. Viewers are invited to use flashlights to cast shadows from these paintings onto stitched ginkgo leaves behind them.

The leaves I used are sourced from different places I called home at the point of making this piece. Physically separated from sites of the painted stories, ginkgo leaves around my local area have become canvases for creating my own tales about family and heritage. The labor of stitching them together was embedded with patience and care, as well, for something that will inevitably age and dissipate, something fragile that is like memory and also like identity.

Since the original making of this piece, I have continued to collect and stitch ginkgo leaves together whenever their falling season comes, rekindling and reembodying cultural, ecological, and spiritual relationships to the ginkgo on foreign yet familiar land.

2025 iteration