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ABOUT

EV Zhang

张宁馨

 Fine Art Photographer | New Media, Video Artist  Freestyle Dancer 

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Artist Photo

Ningxin Zhang (aka EV Zhang) is a London-based Chinese multidisciplinary artist with the UK's Global Talent Visa in Visual Arts. Her work focuses on urban anthropology, travel culture, and creative technology.

Zhang's work has been exhibited globally in galleries, new media and fashion film festivals, and has gained recognition in contemporary art and culture publications.

EV's artistic roots trace back to travel vlogging, where journeys across more than seventeen countries — from the bustling alleyways of Tokyo to the tranquil landscapes of rural Africa — deepened her appreciation for the kaleidoscope of human experience and cultural diversity.

Her photography uncovers the raw, hidden narratives of metropolitan life and amplifies the voices of resilience and radical self-expression within marginalised communities. Her Video Art practice is where memory, friendship, and loss find their form. From personal works about people she has loved and lost, to reflections on art-making itself, EV uses video as a space for the things photography cannot hold, to tell the stories that exist in motion, in voice, in time. Her New Media practice engages new technologies, including AI, as collaborators in visual and conceptual experimentation.

Alongside her visual work, EV is a practitioner of freestyle dance (primarily waacking, hiphop, and house), engaging movement as a form of body language and as immersion in the culture of cyphers, battles, and improvisation. Dance is, for her, both an artistic discipline and a continuation of her wider interest in how communities form, express, and inherit identity.

Her adventurous spirit fuels an unending quest for creative expression, freedom, and connection across mediums, communities, and cultures.

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Artist Statement

At the core of my practice lies a belief that art is as much about presence as it is about preservation. I reject the binary of analog nostalgia and digital futurism; the best images are often the ones left untaken — those that live not in a frame, but in memory, in sensation, in the unspoken.

These moments shape my practice as deeply as any exhibited work.

It’s this interplay of presence and absence that drives me: imagecraft’s power lies not in freezing time, but in magnifying life’s continuum.

To document is to offer a portal, not a preservation — an invitation to perceive the world as an open question rather than an answer. I chase the untranslatable: the texture of a moment that lingers beyond pixels, the imperfection that becomes a work’s fingerprint.

 

My lens gravitates toward the lives of the unconventional individuals who exist beyond the boundaries of societal norms and constraints. Through projects like “Subterranean Souls: Portraits of London's Queer Underground” and “The Real Generation”, I celebrate their authenticity, resilience, and unapologetic self-expression. I see myself as an observer, rather than an advocate. The subjects in my work already speak for themselves — I simply document, reinterpret, and refract their truths.

 

I’m also drawn to the raw, real, and underexposed side of metropolitan cities, approaching urban narratives as forensic poetry. In “Homeless Republic” and “Paradise Divided”, I aim to expose the tension between surface glamour and systemic fragility.

 

My work seeks to capture not just what is seen, but what is felt — the untold, the fleeting, and the intimate. Sometimes, these moments are profound, but often, they are quiet and simple — an abandoned piano in the wilderness, flowers blooming amidst garbage dumps, or a lazy orange cat seeking attention in the afternoon sun. These small moments naturally find their place in my visual diary.

 

Visual expression for me is never confined within a single medium. I view new technologies not as a threat but as a catalyst for human creativity. Artificial Intelligence, generative visuals, and digital manipulation challenge me to innovate, harness their potential, and evolve alongside them. My Video Art project, “The Creative Machine”, for example, investigates the ever-shifting relationship between human vision and machine perception.

Across mediums, I aim to dissolve hierarchies — between observer and observed, the individual and the collective, art and artefact, tradition and the future. By embracing both raw realism and abstract re-imagination, I position my practice at the crossroads of fine art, technology, and contemporary culture, revealing how creativity thrives in the margins where control ends and wonder begins.

SKILLS

  • Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, After Effects, CapCut

  • Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Wix, Squarespace

  • Bilingual English / Mandarin Chinese

EDUCATION

  • Master of Science in Advertising — Boston University, USA

  • Master of Arts in Fashion, Film and Digital Production  London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK

  • Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media  University of Leicester, UK 

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2025

2024

Barcelona, Spain

Tokyo, Japan

Vienna, Austria

  • 🥉  Bronze Medal  — Foto Slovo Award, Trip/Essay Category

Limassol, Cyprus

San Francisco, USA

  •  Honourable Mention  — Vienna International Photo Award (VIEPA), People and Portrait Category

Vienna, Austria

  •  Honourable Mention  — 5th Digital Arts Zurich Festival - DA Z

Zürich, Switzerland

  •  Honourable Mention  — Analog Sparks International Film Photography Awards, Human & Life Style Categories​

​​Budapest, Hungary

2023

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

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