Pillowtalk
Lynette Zhang, Pillowtalk, 2025, clay, plaster, and oil on canvas, mixed media installation. Photo: Jackie Li / Courtesy of the artist.
Lynette Zhang
Project Room
May 27–August 9, 2025
With a combination of humour and quiet reverence, Lynette Zhang’s Project Room installation brings together sculpted and painted scenes that honour everyday moments shared between pets and their humans. Pillowtalk focuses on rest, mutual dependency, and interspecies companionship—essential strategies for survival in these times.
PARALLEL PROGRAM
Emotional Companions: Sculpt a Pet with Lynette (for kids!)
Saturday, August 9, 1-3pm (register here)
ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice explores emotional resonance across species through intimate, domestic scenes. Pillowtalk was inspired by my own sleeping rituals with my pets—where mutual vulnerability becomes a source of strength. I use clay and plaster for their contrast between fragility and solidity, reflecting how care holds us together. Influenced by Ron Mueck’s quiet hyperrealism, I’m drawn to emotional stillness and small gestures. This work reimagines dependence not as weakness, but as a radical, necessary bond between beings who find safety in one another.
Lynette Zhang is a Chinese-Canadian artist currently based in Markham, Ontario. She is completing a double major in Fine Arts and Education through the Concurrent Education program at Queen’s University. Her artistic practice focuses on sculpture and oil painting, often exploring themes of companionship, emotional connection, trust, and mutual dependence. Much of her work is inspired by personal experiences with her companion animals, and she uses materials like clay, plaster, and fabric to create intimate scenes that reflect these relationships. Lynette has participated in several exhibitions at Queen’s, including Mice on Venus (December 2023), a pop-up show by third-year sculpture and time-based media students at Union Gallery, and Obsolescence (April 2025), the BFAH ’25 graduating exhibition held at Ontario Hall. Through her work, she hopes to evoke quiet but powerful emotions, and invite others to reflect on the strength found in vulnerability and care.
THANKS + ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor, Professor Kathleen Sellars, for her ongoing support and guidance throughout the development of this project. I am also deeply grateful to Yujie He, my studio assistant, whose help with material sourcing, transportation, and day-to-day logistics made the completion of this work possible. I would also like to thank the Union Gallery team for their generous support. I am especially grateful to Gallery Director Morgan Wedderspoon, who visited my graduating exhibition and kindly encouraged me to submit this work for exhibition.
Lastly, heartfelt thanks to my beloved companion animals, who patiently acted as my models and waited for me at home while I worked long hours in the studio.