Exhibition of work by artist and practice-led Postgraduate Researcher, Hang Zhang.

Kai Pacha: The Earth We Dwell is Hang Zhang’s second PhD exhibition, following Uku Pacha: The Inner World (August 2023).

In Andean mythology, Kai Pacha represents the time-space where humans and animals coexist.

True to its name, this exhibition explores significant time-spaces from the artist’s life, using lamoid species as a lens to investigate these moments.

About Hang Zhang

Hang Zhang is a Chinese artist and researcher based in London and Leeds. Her art and research explore the intersections of place, beings, and stigma, with a particular focus on nonhuman entities in human history.

Zhang’s research interests lie in social and species constructions, viewed through the lens of inequality. She sees it as an artist’s social responsibility to give a voice to the underrepresented, whether human or nonhuman. This conviction has led her to explore a range of subjects—like Zhang’s late pet Sam, a small lab beetle that would not normally get human care or compassion; heavily tattooed woman bodies stigmatised by the stereotypical association with sexually open and/or poor taste of working class; and Andean camelid farmers whose lives have been deeply impacted by post-colonialism and capitalism.

Having graduated with a first class honours BA Fine Art degree in 2021, Hang Zhang continued her studies in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and finished her MA Fine Art in September 2022.

Zhang’s ongoing practice-led PhD project at the University of Leeds – Using Fictional Narratives within Artistic Practice to Deconstruct the Cultural Images of Lamoid Species – investigates the cultural images of South American lamoid species in globalisation under the epochal impacts of post-colonisation and the Internet.

Recent exhibitions include the NAE Open 2023 at New Art Exchange in Nottingham. Two of Zhang’s pieces were selected for the RA Summer Exhibition 2023 in London, where she won the British Institution Fund Award for her neon sculpture Cat Tattooing Cat.