Ying Zheng’s practices explored topics like social alienation, consumerism, and human experience. The project Purity of True Feelings explores the pure essence of humanity and relationships.

In her current artworks, Ying utilizes the delicate balance between stability and fluidity in ceramics to explore the essence and internal relationship of projection, superego, and conflict in romantic relationships. The abstract forms feature porous structures that metaphorically reflect the invisible yet deeply felt emotional change within the body. Liquid flowing from the interior to the exterior symbolizes the intensity and release of these emotions.

Like the pores of human skin, it overflows with strong emotions. The sculpture overflows with highly colored accretions which evoke outpouring. The forms are like porous structures and can symbolize a ‘body’ or a container of the mind, which carries those unspeakable feelings we have. The idea of a vessel invites bodily identification, blurring the boundary between object and human experience. This vessel metaphorically embodies the superego, containing moral and social codes that filter and restrain raw emotion. Emotions, absorbed like water into a sponge, can be squeezed and gush through the porous surface, an analogy for the internal conflict and the emotional tension within the superego.

She employs gloop glaze as a compelling material language to capture and preserve what she describes as ‘fossilized emotion’. Through ceramic sculpture, Ying Zheng records and reveals the complexity of the inner world and psychological processes, tracing the innocence and fragility of human feelings in romantic relationships.