"While Kochi's culture will drive my imagination, my paintings will be in keeping with Chinese culture. I am a Chinese artist. My work will reflect Chinese culture," he told reporters after visiting Aspinwall House, where his work will be exhibited.
Zhang, on his first visit to India, said he was delighted to be in the country to participate in the first biennale, which begins on December 12.
The artist, who once painted a football and a basketball in a single net at an exhibition in Switzerland in 2008, will work on an 'Into the Skin' site-specific project, in which the surfaces of the exhibition venue would 'become a skin' to show the space as part of the narrative experience.
The 47-year-old Shanghai-based artist, a teacher at the Arts and Design Institute of Donghua University in Shanghai, said he was waiting to see Chinese fishing nets, a major attraction in Fort Kochi. "It is a beautiful city," he added.
Zhang said he had once shared the gallery with famous Indian artist Subodh Gupta at the Hauser and Wirth gallery in New York.
The Chinese artist has requested the Biennale Foundation to provide him with an Indian artist to work with him.