Duality in Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by Artist Jack Zhou
We are thrilled to share a reimagination of our logo by featured artist Jack Zhou, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Jack explores the duality of Eastern and Western traditions, drawing from his experience as a first-generation Chinese immigrant. Thank you Jack for this complex and thought provoking piece!!
Statement by the Artist:
I approached this work as a deeply personal exploration of duality, transition, and cultural convergence, drawing upon symbols from my journey as a first-generation Chinese immigrant navigating between Eastern heritage and Western contemporary life. The form of U whispers balance, harmony, and unity to me—states I continuously strive for. I transform this logo into a metaphoric device conveying the mending of fractured worlds and the linkage of duality within my experience.
A central theme is “阴晴圆缺” (cloudy, sunny, full, missing)—a classical phrase from Su Shi’s Water Melody reflecting life’s cyclical nature of fullness and absence. This mirrors my worldview and lived experience. The contrasting sun and moon divine figures reference not only yin-yang cosmology but my oscillation between erasure and creation, femininity and masculinity, celebration and quiet resilience. Their push and pull echo an inner battleground of belief and background, symbolizing the bittersweetness of this journey.
Throughout my years abroad pursuing aspirations, anxiety has been my constant companion. My American experience, fueled by raw ambitions and desire for fulfillment, brought personal losses: family fractures, my grandmother’s passing, Hangzhou’s alienating reconstruction, my diminishing ability to handwrite Chinese characters, and the numbered years remaining to hold my parents’ hands. There exists profound sorrow but also powerful motion in acknowledging these realities.
The visual composition juxtaposes two worlds through interweaving natural elements. A central tree evokes both my Hangzhou roots—steeped in Chinese philosophy and mythology—and branches representing uprooted aspirations abroad. Both form bridges, reflecting my fragile attempts to connect these realms. The fish and bird, drawn from Eastern folklore and Western mythics, act as twin avatars of my internal dualities: between earthbound memory and aspirational freedom, between nostalgia and reinvention.
Text fragments serve as both narrative anchors and cultural signifiers. Poetry inscribed alongside Western motifs bridges visual and linguistic meaning, reflecting my reconciliation of two tongues and visual traditions. Text becomes image, and image becomes language, as I’ve learned to translate between worlds both inherited and chosen. By combining Chinese textile patterns with medieval European iconography, I’ve constructed a hybrid visual language that feels simultaneously familiar and estranged.
Ultimately, this work meditates on struggle, resilience, and belonging—a quiet tale of my solo adventure and an offering to the diaspora community. It celebrates the beauty found in mending incompleteness, accepting duality, and enduring the search for wholeness within life’s “阴晴圆缺.”
-Jack Zhou, May 2025
About Jack:
Jack X. Zhou is a formidable yet whimsically enigmatic, award-winning illustrator, designer, and situational magician. Shaped by the rich history and ethereal beauty of his birth city Hangzhou, Jack developed an unwavering zeal for drawing while navigating China’s demanding education system. Storytelling through illustration became his instinctual way to express his journey in this turbulent world.
At fourteen, Jack ventured alone to the United States to pursue art—a path leading him to the sweet, delicate, and tormenting in-between of Eastern and Western sensibilities. He experiments with bold palettes, symbolic ornamentation, minimalist design, and pop iconography to capture these dualities. Through refining narratives and reimagining symbolism, Jack explores themes of childhood memory, homesickness, belonging, and the nuanced experience of being a first-generation gay Chinese diaspora artist in America.
Based between Providence and Boston, his work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration-American Photography, and World Illustration Awards. He has built community across the country through food, culture, history, storytelling, and sheer stubborn optimism—elements he nourishes from and illustrates to heal, fortify, and bring the broken world together.