Leah Zhang 张紫璇  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.  
Shaped by her memory of growing up in a mining town in China, Leah’s practice incorporates an inward-looking perspective, just like mining, which digs deeper and deeper into the ground. Inspired by alchemy in mining, Leah’s interest rests in transformation and its ability to shift value and ontology. She is drawn to the unstable passages between forms of being and body, where the cinematic, the poetic, the magical, the chemical, the social, and the personal overlap, rendering moments when representations fail.

zzixuan811@gmail.com



list of works:

Rehearsal
BEELD 相
In Emptiness there is no Form 空中无色
Constellations
YUANDAN, 2022
Fossil Morphology
Absolute Purity 绝对纯洁
The Future Semiotics of A.S.M.R.
I was Born in a Company
Truthful Imaginary
Eyes in Mountains
zzixuan811@gmail.com
+31 647292780

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.   Shaped by her memory of growing up in a mining town in China, Leah’s practice incorporates an inward-looking perspective, just like mining, which digs deeper and deeper into the ground. Inspired by alchemy in mining, Leah’s interest rests in transformation and its ability to shift value and ontology. She is drawn to the unstable passages between forms of being and body, where the cinematic, the poetic, the magical, the chemical, the social, and the personal overlap, rendering moments when representations fail.



Leah currently lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Rehearsal 2024-ongoing
performance, video, text

Rehearsal is an ongoing performance project through which I teach people all over the world (and everywhere I go) to sing my grandma’s version of “Patriotic March”(愛国行進曲). It is a song she learnt 75 years ago from the Japanese Army who colonized her village during WWII. Over the years grandma has altered the lyrics and tune of the song becuase of the lack of practice as well as dementia. The performance mimics the form of rehearsal of a chorus. Through passing this song to the audience, who maybe faraway from this history, I invite people to experience colonial remebering as a personal and ever-transforming process.


First shown and performed at Sally’s Fault, Amsterdam, 2024. Special thanks to Sally’s Fault, Amsterdam.

“排练”是一个正在进行的表演项目，通过这个项目，我教世界各地的人们学唱我祖母版本的“爱国行进曲”。这是二战日军殖民时期，她在日军建设的小学里学习日语时每日练习的一首军歌。直到日军撤离为止，这首歌似乎永远在被排练。老了之后，祖母有时候会向子女们炫耀这首歌，但因痴呆症和缺乏练习，她慢慢改变了这首歌的曲调和歌词。通过这首歌的不断传递与变异，我探讨殖民记忆作为一个私人的、不断在变化的过程。