Leah Zhang works with film, photography, sound and installation. With a background in film studies, her work is a research practice around image and media.  Leah’s work usually involves (onsite) labor and extensive collaboration. Her work discusses the ontology and materiality of image, the subjects and perspectives of looking, the complexity of value and its socio-historical implications. In recent years, Leah has been making work about extraction and alchemy both as a subject and as a thought process, and reflecting upon nature and bodies in politicalized-Anthropocene.


Leah currently lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

I was Born in a Company
Photography
variable sizes

I was not born in a place, but in a company called Central Shandong Mining Co., LTD. It is a state- owned mining company town in China, which has all the self-sufficient institutions and facilities such as hospital, TV station and movie theatre. When I was a child, I once believed that every place was named after a company.
Between 2000 and 2022, the company was privately owned, then bought by the state again. I documented the people and industry dealing with market economy and urbanization during that period, and reflect upon socialist collectivism as both an affection tie and a political structure.



installation view, 2023
Breathing Underneath, Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, China

installation view, 2024
Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, China