Engineering Play: In Conversation with Wenqing Zhai
Wenqing Zhai approaches every paintbrush with the precision of a mechanical engineer. The artist speaks with Lara Xenia about her fascination with toys, her interest in Winnicott, and the symbolism behind her work.
Figure 1: Wenqing Zhai, Who’s counting, 2025, acrylic on cutting board, 12 × 8 inches (30.48 × 20.32 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
Lara Xenia: If you could be in any era on any continent or time, where would you be and why?
Wenqing Zhai: That’s such a good question. Honestly, I think I’d choose…not to be on Earth at all. No matter the era, people always feel like their present is the worst, it’s a pretty universal mindset. But I think every age has its own chaos and uncertainty. It just feels heavier now because we’re in the middle of it. But really, the hard part isn’t about the time, it’s about being human. If I had the option, I think I’d skip humanity altogether and [pause] maybe come back as a cat or a dog. No existential dread, no emotional overload—just naps, snacks, and the occasional mood swing [laughs]. Actually, scratch that—I want to be a big sweet sea urchin. Uni is one of my favorite foods.
Figure 2: Wenqing Zhai, Who’s counting (sketch), charcoal on paper, 8 × 8 inches (20.32 × 20.32 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
LX: Where did you grow up in Northern China and what was one of your first interactions with art?
WZ: I was born in Dalian and grew up in Jilin, in the northeast, where it’s famously cold. After fifth grade, I moved to Tianjin, a city right next to Beijing. I didn’t really get into art until much later. In China, art is often seen as a luxury as there’s a strong emphasis on science and its related subjects, and art was considered not academic. The first time I ever picked up a paintbrush was during a mandatory painting class in my senior year of high school, after I had moved to the U.S. I was just about to turn 18.
LX: That is really recent!
WZ: I know! I’m about to turn 27, so it’s only been about nine years. It still feels fresh to me. I can vividly remember the first time I finished a painting—it was the first time I really cared about something, and I immediately fell in love with it. During my senior year of high school, I would grab a canvas whenever I could and paint from photographs.
At the time, though, I kept it as just a hobby. I ended up going to Penn State for undergrad, majoring in Environmental Systems Engineering. In hindsight, it was such a timid choice [laughs]. I guess most of my friends were going into engineering or business, and I thought, maybe I’ll be a decent engineer too and do something good for the planet [laughs]. But I still remember that turning point, toward the end of my third semester, I was sitting in a physics lab, trying to solve this momentum equation I didn’t even care to understand. And I just had this voice in my head asking, “What are you doing here?” [laughter]. Right after that class, I walked straight to the School of Arts and Architecture and asked the administrator what I needed to do to transfer.
LX: Do you think that your early training as an engineer manifests in your practice now?
WZ: Definitely. I tend to approach each work with a lot of planning and structuring before I even start making it. There’s always a process of sketches, notes, and digital world-building when necessary, and I think that mindset comes from my engineering background.
LX: Your red alphabet sculpture is based on a mass-produced children’s toy, which I assume a lot of engineering happened in making it into such a larger scale. Can you talk about your process? What drew you to that object and why did you bring it to fruition?
Figure 3: Red Winfun Mini Book, 4.65 × 3.41 × 0.78 inches (11.81 cm × 8.66 cm × 1.97 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist
WZ: I found this toy at Goodwill, right after I had finished my three large paintings in my first MFA semester. I was feeling stuck and didn’t want to repeat myself. So I went thrifting and specifically looked for toys. I’m not sure why, but I was immediately drawn to this $3.00 plastic “alphabet book.” It’s one of those interactive educational toys that teaches kids letters by making sounds when you press the buttons. Ironically, it was made in China, but I never had anything like that growing up. I’ve been interested in exploring concepts of early conditioning and the politics of language, and this toy just sparked my inspiration. I didn’t want to just replicate this object—I wanted to subvert it. So I decided to scale it up and alter its content. My goal was to reveal how something as seemingly harmless as a toy can shape how we internalize norms from a very early age.
Figure 4: Wenqing Zhai, Find the letter “O”, 2025, acrylic on plywood and foam, 60 × 48 × 2 inches (152.4 × 121.92 × 5.08 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
It turned into the most complex piece I’ve built so far. I started by sketching out the original shapes and designs in Illustrator, rearranging the components, and experimenting with different word-image pairings. This process took me a long time because I was literally going through a dictionary, meticulously trying out different words along with the images, making sure they were neither too subtle nor too subversive, but still provocative and poetic to some extent. Once I landed on a set I was happy with, I printed a full-scale mock-up on large paper to see how it would sit in space. From there, I moved into material experimentation—running several tests with smaller samples before building the final structure you see now.
LX: Fascinating, the work seems very didactic and ironic [laughter]. What was your childhood like?
WZ: I tend to associate childhood with play, but honestly, I don’t remember ever playing freely. So I wouldn’t say I had a fun or carefree childhood. I didn’t really have toys of my own; no one ever bought me a toy just for the sake of play. Most of them were hand-me-downs from other kids, or they came bundled with something else—like those “Learn English” DVDs my parents bought that included a tiny stuffed animal as a bonus. I remember there was a dragon character named Gogo who went on adventures and learned English along the way. Now that I think about it, the vibe and sound of that cartoon were oddly eerie.
Figure 5: Still from Gogo’s Adventures with English, episode 18, 2:01. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgYmR_Dwz1Y&list=PL_5SUku5vOjgYQj-UkrjrnE79koNSihZf&index=17
My goal was to reveal how something as seemingly harmless as a toy can shape how we internalize norms from a very early age.
LX: Cartoons are so impactful; Rugrats was also pretty creepy. Could you tell me about We Built the Rules, Not the Room?
Figure 6: Wenqing Zhai, We Built the Rules, Not the Room, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 75 × 60 inches (190.5 × 152.4 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
WZ: When I made this work, I was thinking a lot about what it means to be an artist in today’s economy. Art-making often feels like a vocation positioned for consumption—our work circulates in systems where visibility doesn't always equal agency. It can feel, at times, like artists are at the bottom of the food chain: producing in response to cultural and economic forces we have little control over. This was also the first time in quite a while that I included my own portrait in a painting. That decision brought a certain vulnerability with it. As soon as a face appears, viewers tend to project, asking “Is this about you? Is this autobiographical?” I don’t mind the question, but it does introduce a different kind of self-consciousness that I had to sit with during the making of the work.
LX: I honestly didn’t see that initially. It reminded me of that lucky cat figurine that you sometimes see in Chinese or Japanese restaurants.
Figure 7: Wenqing Zhai, We Built the Rules, Not the Room (detail), 2024, acrylic on canvas, 75 × 60 inches (190.5 × 152.4 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
WZ: Yes, people typically put it right next to the register to welcome fortune. It’s like a figure to attach their beliefs on.
LX: Well it’s funny that you painted yourself as one here. You’re literally in a different dimension [laughs]. You also once mentioned to me that the fish in the painting emerged in a dream you had about your dad.
WZ: Yes, that’s right. At the time, my family was going through a financially difficult period—my dad was working extremely hard to support my tuition when I studied as an international student in the U.S. In the dream, though, instead of bringing home money, he brought back buckets of fish. And you know how, in dreams, everything just makes sense. At that moment in my dream, I understood the fish as fortunes—like they were a kind of symbolic wealth. I’m still not even sure where that association came from.
LX: It's fascinating that some artists whimsically include fish in their sky compositions. I don’t know if there’s a universal reasoning for that, but I remember Max Ernst depicted flying fish in the sky of Célèbes.
Figure 8: Max Ernst, Célèbes, 1921, oil paint on canvas, 49.37 x 42.48 inches (125.39 × 107.89 cm); frame: 55 × 47.64 × 4.02 inches (139.7 × 121.01 × 10.21 cm). Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. Purchased 1975 (T01988). Photo: courtesy Tate Modern © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2025
WZ: That’s true. I once almost painted a whale in the sky. Maybe it taps into something deeper, like a collective memory. After all, we did evolve from fish at some point [laughs]. I’m kidding [laughter].
LX: Do you find comfort in making dream landscapes or making things out of this world?
WZ: I think the whole point of my paintings is to construct a world that doesn’t exist, one that feels safe because it’s imaginary and detached from our chaotic reality. But that safety is deceptive. There’s always something off in them, something unsettling. So yes, there’s a sense of comfort in world-building, but that’s not really the goal, it’s more about investigating what lies beneath that comfort.
LX: I’m curious if your practice is informed by psychoanalysis at all?
WZ: Oh yes, absolutely. My practice is definitely informed by psychoanalysis. One figure I’m especially drawn to is Donald Winnicott, who focused on early childhood play. He introduced the concept of transitional objects, things like a blanket or a thumb that children become attached to when they begin to realize they’re separate from their mother’s body. These objects serve as a bridge between inner and outer reality. He also developed the idea of transitional space, which is essentially the space of play, and he saw it as vital for creativity. There are certainly other psychoanalytic thinkers who informed my work, but I feel a particular connection to Winnicott because he writes so directly about play. As we grow up, we’re often discouraged from playing because it’s seen as unproductive or immature. So reclaiming play as an adult, especially through art, feels both liberating and subversive.
LX: I’ve never thought about a transitional object before—so fascinating. Your rocking chair work is a bit ominous and meticulously rendered.
Figure 9: Wenqing Zhai, Will the poking stop?, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 3D printed PLA, and jute rope, 80 × 60 inches (203.2 × 152.4 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
I think the whole point of my paintings is to construct a world that doesn’t exist, one that feels safe because it’s imaginary and detached from our chaotic reality. But that safety is deceptive.
WZ: [Laughs] That’s actually the critique I wanted to embed in the work, the way so many fables or childhood stories come loaded with implicit bias. Stories like Pinocchio, or whatever bedtime tales we grew up with, were absorbed without questioning. I didn’t understand the intention behind them, but they still shaped us. This painting was my way of interpreting what I imagine the cycle would be.
LX: The cycle of what?
WZ: The cycle of internalizing these narratives without knowing their agenda, and then having to unlearn them later. I think a lot about how stories subtly inform our sense of morality—what’s “good” or “bad,” how to behave, what is the truth we need to hold on to. I grew up hearing cautionary tales that were framed as ethical lessons. They weren’t just stories; they were systems of values we were told to prioritize. This work was about trying to break from that—by questioning, reframing, or just making space for the weirdness those stories don’t allow.
LX: The red key reminds me of one of those toys you can drag along with a string. Why did you choose to dangle the teapot from an arm?
WZ: I feel like arms and hands represent power and manipulations, and teapots feel nurturing and domestic to me. I liked the tension between those two ideas. Fun fact: I actually got a lot of feedback saying the piece feels phallic.
LX: Was that even intentional? Where is the phallicism? I don’t see it.
WZ: Apparently the horse head, the wheels, even the way the arm stands upright—people read all of that as phallic. I didn’t see it that way, but I guess I had a lot of Freudian viewers [laughs].
Figure 10: Wenqing Zhai, Myth of Loss, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 40 × 40 inches (101.6 × 101.6 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
LX: Neither do I [laughter]. This pink mask work also lured me into your studio. This is a bit of a tangent, but do you know the musical Cabaret?
WZ: No, what is it?
Figure 11: Film still of Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles, Cabaret, 1972. Photo: Bob Fosse © Turner Classic Movie
LX: It’s about a woman during WWII who worked in a cabaret. The main character, Sally Bowles, famously has these illustrious emerald nails, almost to reflect her unconventional personality. She’s like a femme fatale seductress in the production. When I saw that I briefly wondered if maybe there’s a cabaret-esque element with the mask.
WZ: That’s so interesting! And now that you mention it, I can totally see a Phantom of the Opera vibe in this piece. The composition does feel theatrical—and the dark background even has a curtain-like quality to it. I love the idea of metallic green nails as a symbol of unconventionality.
This piece is called Myth of Loss. I was thinking about the words “flower” and “deflower,” and how language so effortlessly disguises violence and patriarchal myth-making as romance.
LX: Why did you choose to use acrylic? I’ve also noticed you incorporate hands a lot in your works [points to a painting].
Figure 12: Wenqing Zhai, It’s Just Heavy Traffic, 2023, acrylic on linen, 49.21 × 39.37 (125 × 120 cm). Photo: courtesy the artist © Wenqing Zhai
WZ: That’s a great question. Starting with the acrylic—I just couldn’t stand the smell of oil paint and solvents. Thankfully, with the way acrylic has developed now, you can achieve many of the same qualities as oil, its glossiness, translucency, and even slower drying if you want it. But I usually work fast, so I love acrylic’s quick-drying nature. As for the painting with hands, this painting was inspired by arcade claw machines. I wanted to strip away any personal narrative or emotional projection, so I made the hands look mechanical, almost toy-like. I don’t hate painting hands, but I can’t say I love it either.
LX: What are you currently working on?
WZ: I’m working on a tangram puzzle that forms a square when assembled, but it’s scaled up to a point where it’s actually too large and heavy for even adults to play with. Beside this time-consuming project, I’m also making new paintings at the same time.
LX: [Looks up tangram] It’s interesting that these have a Chinese puzzle history.
WZ: Really? I had no idea it was originally invented in China. But now that you mention it, the Chinese name makes a lot more sense.
LX: Yes, qīqiǎobǎn (七巧板) or “seven boards of skill.” It’s apparently a dissection puzzle that was reputedly invented in China as early as the Song Dynasty and took off in the 18th century as a result of silk and porcelain trade, then made its made its way to Europe and America. It apparently reflects the philosophy that “complex truths” or infinite variety can derive from strict sets of rules or simple, interrelated parts.
WZ: Wow, I had no idea it had such a long history. I honestly thought it was a postwar Western product mass-produced in China. That’s really cool—thanks for sharing that.
LX: I love that that was totally unintentional.
Wenqing Zhai
Wenqing Zhai (b. 1998, Dalian, China) interrogates modes of play and childhood in her practice. Zhai engages with toys, puppets, stories and myths as social artifacts that hum beneath the surface of who we are. She is interested in the tension between illusion and truth, in what looks harmless and what hides underneath. Throughout her oeuvre, she sifts through these beliefs carriers to unravel their deceptions and manipulation. She examines what has shaped us and who benefits from the shaping, probing viewers to imagine what else could be possible. Zhai received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from Pennsylvania State University and is pursuing an MFA in Painting/Printmaking at Yale University.