Shelters: Meng Zhou’s Solo Exhibition

Bringing together painting, sculpture, and installation, Zhou creates a temporary encampment against the backdrop of the New York skyline. Wooden shelters, rust-redhuman figures, and carvings imbued with ritual significance explore the possibilities of home, belonging, and mutual care in an unsettled world. Bringing together a new collection of site-specific paintings, sculptures, and installations, the exhibition explores home, belonging, and mutual care in an unsettled world. Set against New York’s skylineonthe80th floor of 3 World Trade Center, Zhou constructs a temporary encampment of wooden shelters enclosing rust-red human figures. Paintings cover the structures inside and out, while the figures, seemingly fragile, are made from resilient weathered steel. Recalling makeshift shelters on city streets, the installation invites viewers to imagine the lives and stories within. Some may recognize endurance; others, vulnerability. Protection remains ambiguous: the structures offer refuge while establishing boundaries, leaving their inhabitants both sheltered and exposed. Born in Shaoxing, China, and based in London, Zhou’s experience of living between cultures and places informs his consideration of home as something continually reimagined. His practice draws on mythology, folk traditions, craft and natural history, bringing cultural symbols into dialogue with ecological concerns. Layering, erosion, and reconstruction make material transformation integral to his works, along with the passage of time. Rather than asserting a single meaning across cultures, Zhou seeks connections between different histories and experiences. Within sight of the Statue of Liberty, Shelters brings these concerns into a setting charged with histories of migration, destruction, and renewal. Both tragic and humorous, the exhibition invites viewers to recognize a shared vulnerability and ask whether the structures we build to protect ourselves can ever provide lasting shelter. To attend the private view (October 27, Friday, 5- 8 pm), click here to register, or RSVP to [email protected]. The exhibition is open Monday–Friday, 8.30 AM–5 PM, by appointment, from October 28, 2026, to February 2, 2027. To arrange your visit, please RSVP to [email protected]. For press enquiries, images and interview requests relating to this exhibition, please contact [email protected].