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
→ Updates in progress

The artwork “Liminal Space” is part of the project “Another Goodbye”, a deeply personal response to the death of Kangyue’s mother, documenting her grief and the fragmented memories that remain. Drawing from her mother’s belongings—especially her scarf, which serves as a medium to awaken her emotional memories—she explore the lingering presence of loss and the invisible bonds of love that continue beyond death.

Inspired by the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ), Kangyue reflect on the transient beauty of life and the quiet melancholy of impermanence. Using the photogram technique, she imprint traces of memory, creating images that exist in the space between presence and absence.

In the post-digital era, Liminal Space invokes the tension between memory, reality, and dreams, questioning the blurred boundaries between death and life. Through this work, Kangyue seek to reveal the hidden wounds of intimate relationships and the complex, inescapable emotions that remain.