Zeta Gao
/Zeta Gao was born in China and then spent half of her life growing up in the city of London. She then went on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from Parsons School of Design in 2015. After graduating, Gao’s work from her Senior Thesis show was solely chosen to be debuted at the Max Mara store in Soho, New York City from September to November of 2015. For the following two years, Gao studied filmmaking and then decided to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts degree in photography at her alma mater in 2017. During her graduate study, Gao was featured in the Pingyao International Photography Festival where she received the Young Photographer Award for her outstanding work. She is currently based in New York City working primarily in the mediums of photography, video, and Virtual Reality.
Drawing from her background in filmmaking, Zeta Gao directs her work towards familial relationships, childhood trauma, a friend’s death, and past life regression. She creates an archetypical experience of traumatizing narratives based on her hypnosis. Gao approaches her work through a lens of Eastern and Western art, as well as spiritual traditions such as reincarnation as described by Zen Buddhism and Christian mysticism.
Her most recent work HOUSED, a VR installation exhibited at Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Gao puts her vision of past life regression seen under hypnosis into the world of Virtual Reality by painting with 3-D brushes. She creates an immersive experience and also stirs a feeling that is qualitatively new. She connects strongly with the idea of escaping completely into another dimension, and wants viewers to be able to find their own way to that surreal vision of self-discovery, to have their own aesthetic, artistic, and conceptual revelation.
Open Studios - Feb 19, 2020
View work here -
