EDUCATION
2022-2023 MA, Textiles, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2021-2022 Graduate Diploma, Art and Design, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2017-2020 BA (hons) Fashion and Textile Design: Knitwear for Fashion, Winchester School of Art, Winchester, UK
SELECTED EXHIBITION
2025
Shelter, The New Art Gallery Walsall, London
A Reverie to Pray Under The Skirt of Blue Night, St Anne’s Church, London
Echoes of Presence, Blackdot Gallery, London. https://www.blackdotgallery.com/gallery/kong-qianyang
Culture Heritage Week, Last Words of The Dust II, Broadwick Studio, London.
Spring Time Event, Fore Street For All CIC, Angel Yard, London
2024 Resilience in The Wind, Cell Studio, London
2023
BritCham, Shanghai Best Emerging Talent Festival, Online Exhibition, Shanghai
Point 1, Textile Festival, Royal College of Art Kensington Campus, London
Calculate The Memory, DUCFS exhibition, Durham, UK
2022
Reveal the Fantasy, RCA Textile Department, London
2020 Degree Show, Winchester School of Art, Winchester, United Kingdom
2019 Spinexpo Paris, Cité de la Mode et du Design, France
2018 Retro Game, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian, China
2022-2023 MA, Textiles, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2021-2022 Graduate Diploma, Art and Design, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2017-2020 BA (hons) Fashion and Textile Design: Knitwear for Fashion, Winchester School of Art, Winchester, UK
SELECTED EXHIBITION
2025
Shelter, The New Art Gallery Walsall, London
A Reverie to Pray Under The Skirt of Blue Night, St Anne’s Church, London
Echoes of Presence, Blackdot Gallery, London. https://www.blackdotgallery.com/gallery/kong-qianyang
Culture Heritage Week, Last Words of The Dust II, Broadwick Studio, London.
Spring Time Event, Fore Street For All CIC, Angel Yard, London
2024 Resilience in The Wind, Cell Studio, London
2023
BritCham, Shanghai Best Emerging Talent Festival, Online Exhibition, Shanghai
Point 1, Textile Festival, Royal College of Art Kensington Campus, London
Calculate The Memory, DUCFS exhibition, Durham, UK
2022
Reveal the Fantasy, RCA Textile Department, London
2020 Degree Show, Winchester School of Art, Winchester, United Kingdom
2019 Spinexpo Paris, Cité de la Mode et du Design, France
2018 Retro Game, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian, China
PRESS
2025
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202504/30/WS6811ca96a310a04af22bd151.html by China Daily
Fore Street For All e-newsletter by Jade Chao
https://est8magazine.com/to-witness,-to-resist-kong-qianyang by EST8 Magazine, Barcelona, Spain
The Holy Art Magazine, Issue 07, London
2024
ReadingCub, Beijing Zhijapan Culture Comunciation Co., Ltd
https://ellenkydd.substack.com/p/studio-update by Ellen Kydd, Elle's Monologue, Online Publication
2022 Red Is on Red by Royal College of Art, Online Publication
AWARDS
2025 Shortlist by Cockpit Art for Make It Award, London, UK
2025 Shortlist and Special Mention by CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo for CREA OPEN 2025, Venice, Italy
2020 Nominated Talent, Fashion Crossover London, United Kingdom
2016 Winner of Creative Design, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian, China
WORK EXPERIENCE
9/2023-9/2024 Artist Assistant, Sandra Poulson Studio, London
2025
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202504/30/WS6811ca96a310a04af22bd151.html by China Daily
Fore Street For All e-newsletter by Jade Chao
https://est8magazine.com/to-witness,-to-resist-kong-qianyang by EST8 Magazine, Barcelona, Spain
The Holy Art Magazine, Issue 07, London
2024
ReadingCub, Beijing Zhijapan Culture Comunciation Co., Ltd
https://ellenkydd.substack.com/p/studio-update by Ellen Kydd, Elle's Monologue, Online Publication
2022 Red Is on Red by Royal College of Art, Online Publication
AWARDS
2025 Shortlist by Cockpit Art for Make It Award, London, UK
2025 Shortlist and Special Mention by CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo for CREA OPEN 2025, Venice, Italy
2020 Nominated Talent, Fashion Crossover London, United Kingdom
2016 Winner of Creative Design, Dalian Polytechnic University, Dalian, China
WORK EXPERIENCE
9/2023-9/2024 Artist Assistant, Sandra Poulson Studio, London
ARTIST BIO:
Kong Qianyang (b. 1998, Ningbo) is a London-based Chinese artist whose works span across site-specific sculpture, installation, photography, and poetry.
She received a Master’s degree in Textiles at the Royal College of Art in 2023. Her works discourse the narratives that emphasise the architectural heritage and the living memory.
Her sculptures and installation have been exhibited at Broadwick Studios, Angel Yard and Blackdot Gallery in London. She was recently nominated and given a special award by Cantieri del Contemporaneo for Crea Open 2025 (Venice). Kong's work is also published by EST8 MAGAZINE (Barcelona) and China Daily (Beijing).
Kong Qianyang (b. 1998, Ningbo) is a London-based Chinese artist whose works span across site-specific sculpture, installation, photography, and poetry.
She received a Master’s degree in Textiles at the Royal College of Art in 2023. Her works discourse the narratives that emphasise the architectural heritage and the living memory.
Her sculptures and installation have been exhibited at Broadwick Studios, Angel Yard and Blackdot Gallery in London. She was recently nominated and given a special award by Cantieri del Contemporaneo for Crea Open 2025 (Venice). Kong's work is also published by EST8 MAGAZINE (Barcelona) and China Daily (Beijing).
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My practice ties back to my childhood memory. The courtyard that I had been living ten years in the outskirt of city Ningbo before the demolition spread. The nostalgia and unresolved displacement to the collapse of home drives my works often resonate with the desolate scene of ruin left behind the demolitions.
The suspended ruin left a scar behind demolition, particularly affecting those from the 1960s, earlier generations and children they raise up. This scar cannot be seamlessly healed—but it must be affirmed. Through my work, I strive to create a liminal space, reflecting a psychological “in-between” state—an unsettling feelings in those displaced communities.
Within the liminal space that ruins situated, an element of architecture is free to traverse in nonlinear structure narratives, neither sharp evidence of the deteriorated materiality after demolition, nor reclaimed material for a construction site-an ongoing process, but as both simultaneously. Extracting a corner of a building, including bracket underneath roof, interior column-and-beam structure rather than presenting the buildings in their entirety, dictates ambiguous interpretations and disrupts the linear structure of story-telling, thus neither the past nor the future state of being, much as ruin does, visually communicate the unresolved displacement left behind the demolition of home.
The place I work and live pieces back my reflection and further interpretation to the physical form of home. My work retrospect the Chinese architectural traditions and re-contextualise the vernacular studies in a broader art and culture sector by rebuilding the collective memory of architecture in the place I am.
I involve materials and construction techniques, such as mortise and tenon joinery, that have been historically used in Ningbonese architectural traditions and also merge the material that could be accessed in the UK. By rebuilding collective memory of architecture, I execute the works in London and collectively work with a London-based atelier-James Brown. His photo album chromatically documented last century landscape before the rapid change of urban and erasure of vernacular culture across Yangtze River. By rebuilding collective memory of, my work resonates with universal loss-the collapse of home, the displacement and the dissolve of physical form.
Perceiving my work as the broken masonry, stuccoed since two centuries ago and holding the lingering warmth of my ancestors’ palms; as the interstice between the beam and column, bearing silent witness to the decline in the mortise and tenon wooden joinery; as a particle of dust, drifting here and there, destined to be swept away by the inevitable tide.
My practice ties back to my childhood memory. The courtyard that I had been living ten years in the outskirt of city Ningbo before the demolition spread. The nostalgia and unresolved displacement to the collapse of home drives my works often resonate with the desolate scene of ruin left behind the demolitions.
The suspended ruin left a scar behind demolition, particularly affecting those from the 1960s, earlier generations and children they raise up. This scar cannot be seamlessly healed—but it must be affirmed. Through my work, I strive to create a liminal space, reflecting a psychological “in-between” state—an unsettling feelings in those displaced communities.
Within the liminal space that ruins situated, an element of architecture is free to traverse in nonlinear structure narratives, neither sharp evidence of the deteriorated materiality after demolition, nor reclaimed material for a construction site-an ongoing process, but as both simultaneously. Extracting a corner of a building, including bracket underneath roof, interior column-and-beam structure rather than presenting the buildings in their entirety, dictates ambiguous interpretations and disrupts the linear structure of story-telling, thus neither the past nor the future state of being, much as ruin does, visually communicate the unresolved displacement left behind the demolition of home.
The place I work and live pieces back my reflection and further interpretation to the physical form of home. My work retrospect the Chinese architectural traditions and re-contextualise the vernacular studies in a broader art and culture sector by rebuilding the collective memory of architecture in the place I am.
I involve materials and construction techniques, such as mortise and tenon joinery, that have been historically used in Ningbonese architectural traditions and also merge the material that could be accessed in the UK. By rebuilding collective memory of architecture, I execute the works in London and collectively work with a London-based atelier-James Brown. His photo album chromatically documented last century landscape before the rapid change of urban and erasure of vernacular culture across Yangtze River. By rebuilding collective memory of, my work resonates with universal loss-the collapse of home, the displacement and the dissolve of physical form.
Perceiving my work as the broken masonry, stuccoed since two centuries ago and holding the lingering warmth of my ancestors’ palms; as the interstice between the beam and column, bearing silent witness to the decline in the mortise and tenon wooden joinery; as a particle of dust, drifting here and there, destined to be swept away by the inevitable tide.