Born in Shanghai in 1967, Zhang Xin currently lives and works in Shanghai. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Sculpture Department of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in 1990 and has since been working at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute. Zhang’s artistic practice bears a profound imprint of socialist realist aesthetics while simultaneously breaking away from its constraints through avant-garde conceptual installations and performative experiments. This dual-track approach reflects the complex realities faced by artists within specific socio-historical contexts.

Zhang Xin’s works have been widely exhibited in museums and art institutions around the world. Notable exhibitions she has participated in include the Shanghai First International Fax Art Exhibition (1996); Keepers of the Waters (Lhasa), a series of art events that took place along the Lhasa River in 1996; Half of the Sky at the Frauen Museum in Bonn, Germany (1998); Century • Women at the National Art Museum of China (1998); and Portrait of the Times: 30 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2013).