Zhang Mingxuan

Zhang Mingxuan, born in 1998 in Liaoning, China, moved to Wuhan, Hubei, in 2003 with her family. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in the UK with a Bachelor’s degree in 2020 and a Master’s from the Royal College of Art in 2023. She currently lives and works between London and Hong Kong. Zhang’s artistic practice centres around the fluidity and desymbolisation of the body, examining the relationship between the body, space and gaze through contortion and absence. Adroitly incorporating real, ready-made textiles into paintings, she captures the transition between the ‘illusion’ and the ‘real’. The application of tangible matter to cover and encase the ‘virtual body’ in her paintings has become her reflection on the situation of the body in reality. In most of her works, the canvas is transformed into a frame or vessel, imposing a forceful compression on the subject in the image, through which she reassesses and iteratively explores the societal definition of the concept of the body and the possible implication and connotation that the image of the body. Zhang Mingxuan is also fascinated by the differences in the understanding of body/space between Eastern and Western contexts. Through her works, she addresses conflict and confrontation, encapsulation and synthesis as unique interpretations and explorations of her experience in a multicultural context.

Education

2021 – 2023 Royal College of Art, UK, MA Print

2016 – 2020 Central Saint Martins, UK, BA (hons) Fine Art

Group Exhibitions

Bainbridge Open 2023, ASC Gallery, June 2023

Two Fold, Southwark Park Galleries, March 2023

The damage is Done!, Pumphouse Gallery , March 2022

‘Infinity energy loop’ Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, January 2019