On May 17th, 2022 Shannon Zheng was selected as an Art in the Legislator winner.

American Peony

American Peony

The Art in the Legislature Program displays and celebrates the work of excellent student artists from Michigan’s 15 public universities each year, and their respective works are displayed in the Anderson House Office Building, or the Binsfeld Senate Building, for one year.

Artist Statement:

When the “Asian culture” simulacrum is prioritized over the reality of racialized violence against Asian-presenting femme bodies, we become the absent referent. To those who read this as a representation of what it means to be Asian-American, this painting suffers, existing in a perpetual hyperreality of scrambling to represent a false racial monolith.