Beichen Zhang: New ExorcistCurated by Zhejun Gao
New Exorcist, still, 2026. Courtesy of Beichen Zhang
New Exorcist is a presentation and public programme centred on a new double-channel video work by artist Beichen Zhang. The project takes as its point of departure Pazuzu, a wind demon from ancient Mesopotamian mythology associated with both destruction and protection, and considers the figure’s afterlives across different contexts. Zhang approaches Pazuzu not as a stable historical object, but as a mutable form shaped by circulation, interpretation and appropriation.
Continuing his long-standing investigation into the displacement of cultural objects, Zhang examines how meaning is produced through changing contexts and systems of mediation. New Exorcist situates Pazuzu at the intersection of the museum, film and consumer culture, asking not what the figure once was, but what it has been made into, and what it might yet become. The double-channel work unfolds along two interrelated trajectories: exorcism as an institutional operation through which anomalies are named, contained and rendered legible, and the possible failure of that operation. One channel presents keyframes from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), re-photographed onto 35mm slides and overlaid with inscribed marks that interrupt the image’s apparent coherence. The other moves into a speculative landscape in which Pazuzu no longer appears as an object to be recovered, but as an atmospheric and unstable force, resistant to capture and containment.
Presented alongside the video are vitrines of research materials, production images, textual references and object studies related to the project’s development. A selection of earlier works by Zhang extends these concerns, tracing his wider engagement with questions of restitution, diaspora, cultural ownership and the unstable lives of objects in transit. The display will be open to visitors every Tuesday to Thursday, 2–6 pm.
New Exorcist forms part of an ongoing project by Zhejun Gao, our Curatorial Research Fellow at Chisenhale Gallery. Through exhibitions, screenings and conversations, Zhejun’s research considers how cultural objects are mediated across institutional, cinematic and popular registers, and how processes of display, narration and reproduction shape the meanings they come to bear. Within this framework, Zhang’s project opens up broader questions around possession and projection, the circulation of myth through contemporary image culture, and the unstable relation between historical artefact and cultural fantasy. This presentation marks an interim chapter in that wider line of inquiry, bringing artistic research into dialogue with curatorial investigation.
The opening event includes a screening of New Exorcist, a tour of the display led by Zhejun, and a presentation and conversation with artist, curator, and educator Megan Carnrite. An additional screening of Zhang’s works will take place in May.
Opening Event
Time: 2–4.30pm, 25.04.2026
Location: Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY
Free entry, booking essential
Additional Screening
Time: 2–4.30pm, 09.05.2026
Location: Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY
Free entry, booking essential