Yihao Zhao
Artist and photography exploring the interplay of entropy, materiality, and post-human ecosystems through photography and installation.The work interrogates industrial decay as a site of ecological reclamation,capturing rusted machinery,fractured concrete,and botanical incursions into urban ruins.By framing derelict objects as collaborators in nature’s re-composition,Yihao challenges anthropocentric narratives,revealing how corroded steel mimics coral growth and plastic debris morphs into synthetic flora.
Unreflected Light
The Book of Ice
Traces
Email
Instagram
All inspiration for Hidden System sprang from living between city streets and rural fields. The sharp contrasts of these environments drew me to the margins where urban order yields to wild openness. I became fascinated by unique traces left where human activity and natural forces converge.
Walking the Thames banks from Greenwich to Woolwich taught me to listen: rusted tools, moss‑clad concrete, charred wood, and sprouting vines all map time and place. Once “ready‑to‑hand,” discarded objects now stand as “present‑at‑hand,” each asserting its own material being. Guided by object‑oriented ontology, I treat every hinge, pipe, and plant as an active participant in networks beyond human control.
I also explore the tension between our urge to dominate nature with tools and nature’s response in transforming those very tools—stripping them of human definitions and returning them to raw matter. This dynamic challenge to anthropocentrism reveals a form of urban rewilding. Influenced by systems esthetics, I see decay and regrowth as intertwined processes—an emergent order born from disorder.
Hidden System invites viewers to step out of control and into accompaniment. By slowing down and observing, we discover hidden rhythms that bind metal, wood, and leaf. In this shared wilderness, humans stand among nonhuman forces. We are called to imagine a future shaped by listening, respect, and mutual transformation.
08/02/2025