THERE are several identities for Zhou Hoho: fashion designer, musician and artist.

The exhibition “Zhou Hoho: Carry Me with Forms,” which presents the artist’s oeuvre over the past five years — primarily installations, sculptures and photography — is ongoing at Long Museum West Bund through September 12.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the book “Zhuangzi,” one of the most important Daoist texts in the Chinese tradition.

Curated by art critic Wang Xiaosong, the exhibition features 19 groups of Zhou’s works, embodying the idea of consciousness and the biological forms she has explored throughout her career.

Zhou’s personal life and learning experiences conditioned her to be artistically and professionally sensitive toward mixed media and visual arts communication, as well as the exploration of life’s natural forms.

At a young age, she and her mother left China and went to Germany, where she received early musical education. After returning to China, she studied at the high school affiliated to Sichuan Conservatory of Music. Unfortunately, she gave up piano three years later, because her hands were not big enough for a professional pianist.

“Perhaps this is skeletal dysplasia,” she said.

That might explain her fascination for human skeletons in her later artistic creations. In her eyes, a skeleton is the truth of life.

“In fact, skeletons grow, and they are the very support of living,” she said. “I prefer the texture of skeletons, which represent the most primitive state of every creature and the process of evolution.”

Some call Zhou’s work “skeleton sculpture,” because many of her works, though depicting the diversity of life, are reminiscent of skeletons at first sight.

Appearing bizarre and abstract, her works sometimes even look alien and alternative, and are, in her words, the “natural extension of often-overlooked everyday objects.”

The global pandemic has made Zhou reflect on the “visible” and “present.” For example, several of her works in the exhibition feature skeleton-structured “human lungs” infected by COVID-19.

Daughter of Zhou Chunya, who is one of the best-selling Chinese artists in contemporary art scene, Zhou Hoho obviously leads a wayward life compared to her peers.

Failing to be a pianist, she was admitted to the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. After graduation, she furthered her study at the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, just because of her love for VAMPS, a Japanese rock-n-roll band.

Because she studied costume design in Japan, she understands the traits of fabrics and applies them to her sculptures and installations.

“We learn various things throughout our lives, and I believe there is nothing useless. At a certain moment, it will bump out and give you support,” she said.

Dates: Through September 12 (closed on Mondays), 10am-5:30pm

Tickets: 200 yuan

Venue: Long Museum (West Bund)

Address: 3398 Longteng Avenue