Xiaomeng Zhang

Xiaomeng (Millie) Zhang is a storyteller, also an illustrator from Shanghai currently based in London. As a child she was a detective, searching for treasures like broken keychains, unpaired earrings or old sketchbooks in every closet at home and daydreaming about the random thoughts of those objects. Even now that she’s all grown up, Millie still doesn’t change her hobby of collecting. She believes objects are able to catalyse self-creation.

I've been dreaming in a cocoon buried six feet underground since before I became aware of its existence. The dark basement is both a cold abyss and a warm womb. Behind my eyelids I heard my own echo. I shared the dream that preceded Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, which is the gate of our spiritual homeland. Although we cannot install the electric lights of civilisation in the chaotic cellar, we can still  record its ambiguous outline with the help of the light of the candlestick. 

Bachelard talks about the cellar as the first and foremost dark entity of the house, and how in our dreams there we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths. He offers us a nest of dreams and a sanctuary of the imagination. And that’s also what I want to do since that summer I found out my obsession with the basement and garbage dumps.