Zhi Ding's paintings are deeply rooted in her lived experiences, shaped both by memories of growing up in the small city of Jiujiang, China, and by the dislocations of life abroad. Her practice moves fluidly between the personal and the collective, between memory and fiction, where elements of magical realism surface subtly, balancing cartoonish innocence with somber, wistful introspection.

Figures often hover at the threshold of visibility or linger within moments of transition, generating atmospheres that are simultaneously charged and suspended — spaces in which the familiar collides with the strange and certainty dissolves into ambiguity. Through the tensions between observation and secrecy, progress and stagnation, power and fragility, reality and illusion, Ding delineates the fragile contours of ordinary lives with humor, sensitivity, and compassion. Ultimately, her paintings become the portraits of everyday life—cruel yet tender, grounded in harsh reality yet never without hope.