Kangyue Zhang
Visual Artist
Photography
London based

Kangyue Zhang, a Chinese artist born in Japan, earned her BA in Visual Communication Design from NCUT in Beijing in 2022. She then moved to England and completed an MFA in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in 2024.

Kangyue is influenced by Japanese aesthetics
‘ Mono-aware’ and ‘ Wabi Sabi’, she unconsciously captures the vulnerability of beauty in objects, using sound, sketch, image and text to present her perception of the material and immaterial. The lapse of time has obliterated the memories which lie hidden in the mind, but objects or places which have not changed in the course of time are invariably recalled with intense emotion.

The artworks "Another Goodbye" and “The Negative Space of Photo” become ways to respond to emotions and reflect on modern urban life as a form of recollection.



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To readers:

Every object is a vessel of memory—fragments, connections, ruptures, and reconstructions. Time is not linear but a layering of intersecting moments. To flip through, to touch, to gaze, to forget. My photography is an archive of time, a way of awakening. Memories do not vanish; they hide within the folds and the play of light and shadow.Tutors/Contributors

Anna Fox
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé

Thanks for all MFA Photography students from UCA during 2022-2024.

Contact / Social Links

Instagram: @zhangkangyue_
Email: kouka0604@outlook.com
WeChat: zhangkangyue_tsukina Research Journal
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YouTube Link: Another Goodbye, experimental film, 2024
In the process of developing the project Liminal Space, I document my emotions and memories of my mother through visual diary, which led me to question the connection between dreams, memories and reality in my artwork. How does my trauma reflected in virtual reality? How can I convey my grief to the viewer in a way that allows them to experience liminal sentiments and transmit memories and dreams in the notion?

The concept of Liminal Space is the best way to express my confusion state of grief after a traumatic event occurs. In its theory, individuals can recall past experiences, feel emotional resonance, or experience a vague, unresolved state.  So I experimented with a range of media, such a s creating visual poem by photogram with material objects and texts, recording audio sounds and making moving images.

Finally I made an experimental film as a composite vehicle to present my final graduation project. The nature of its editing can encapsulate the temporality and fragmentation of traumatic memory. The occurrence of a traumatic event is not in itself threatening to the human spirit, but rather in the repetition of memory flashbacks over and over again. It is like waking up from a nightmare.