Muhan Zhang

Muhan Zhang (she/her) 张慕含 is a queer arts worker, writer, and creative. She ties queer colourful Chinese knots to make jewelry and sculpture. Her work explores the ritual significance of knots as symbols. She is the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants to the unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.

Chinese knotwork 中国结 zhongguo jie is a folk art with ties to Buddhist and Taoist symbology and ritual dating to prehistoric times. It is oftentimes seen in Chinatowns and restaurants, used to project authenticity to Western audiences and/or signify ties to an imagined homeland. As a queer person in the diaspora, I create work that reflect and refract these semiotic layers. A distinct feature of Chinese knotwork is that each piece has to be tied with a single continuous cord, woven into many different shapes. To me, these knots are a way to represent the complex ties many people of colour have to our cultures and families of origin, as well as to the dehumanizing racialization we experience under white supremacy.

Muhan was the Marketing & Communications Manager at Out On Screen for five years (2020-2025), where she amplified the stories of 2SLGBTQIA+ peoples through the annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival and Out In Schools program. Muhan has also worked at Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts (SEARA), Access Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery, the Rubin Museum of Art, and Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. She sat on the board of Centre A: Centre for Contemporary Asian Art from 2023 to 2025 where she supported the staff’s unionization effort.

Muhan was a producer on Long Live Kings (2025), a documentary web series about drag kings in Vancouver that screened at the Queer Arts Festival, Museum of Vancouver, UBC, and The Birdhouse Artspace. Her cultural criticism and creative writing have been published in SAD Mag and C Mag. Muhan studied Art History and East Asian Studies at McGill University and received a Master of Arts in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.