Dawei Zhao is a New York–based artist working with sculpture and installation, whose practice emerges from close observation of everyday life and urban power structures.

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he examines the strategies through which centralized authority shapes public and private space, and how these forces register in daily life. Using materials such as concrete and sugar glass—associated with permanence, control, fragility, and impermanence—he stages tensions between solidity and vulnerability as a way to reflect on value, labor, and uneven urban systems. Growing up in Xi’an, a city marked by historical erasure, accelerated reconstruction, and forced displacement, deeply shaped his understanding of how political power operates through myth, regulation, and efficiency. These experiences continue to inform his investigation into how cities become sites where individuals are both absorbed and constrained.

 

Dawei is an MFA Fine Arts candidate at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and received a BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media and minor in art history from Virginia Commonwealth University.