Mei Zhao is a Chinese-born, Sydney-based landscape artist. She grew up in Tianjin, China, and migrated to Australia in 1994. Her practice is shaped by lived experience, including forced farming labour during the late Cultural Revolution and her subsequent life as an Australian migrant. These histories inform her approach to landscape as a site of exploring cultural transformation through multi-perspectival and topographical representations.

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Zhao’s current work investigates underrepresented histories of early Chinese migration, focusing on traces of nineteenth-century Chinese market gardens across Sydney and regional NSW. Her process combines archival research with plein-air studies, translated into expressive paintings and installations through gestural mark-making, layered colour, and material experimentation.

 

Zhao obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting in 2019 and a Master of Fine Art in painting in 2022 from the National Art School (NAS). Zhao has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions. Zhao was awarded a research grant from Create NSW in 2023, which led her to develop a new body of work for a solo exhibition, Remapping Erased Landscape, at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery (15th February - 25th May 2025). This exhibition is commissioned by the gallery and supported by Create NSW. Her works are held in St Vincent’s Private Hospital and private collections in Australia and the United States.