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.

YUANDAN,2022 2023
2 channel video
12’00’’


This work addresses the displacement of a village due to land collapse caused by heavy mining. It is filmed from the perspective of a goat, the last inhabitants in the village trapped in an unremovable pen. The goat recorded the death and birth of another goat in the winter of 2022.
This video studies the movement of penning, the affect generated from identifying with a non-human body, and the conflicts condensed through the claustrophobic experience of the goats. It explores the condition of the animal lying among life, meat and machine, as well as the disjunction between personal experience and social change in contemporary China.





installation view, 2023
Breathing Underneath, Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, China
installation view, 2023
Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth, Woonhuis, Amsterdam, Netherlandsinstallation view, 2023
De Ateliers, Amsterdam, Netherlands