HONGRU ZHANG

Hongru Zhang

Installation View

Title: Embodied Form II

Year: 2024

Medium: Steel, Bronze and Latex

Dimension: L40cm x W24cm x H8cm

Title: Embodied Form I

Year: 2024

Medium: Steel, Bronze and Latex

Dimension: L40cm x W30cm x H10cm

“Embodied Form I& II” plays on the idea of skin, bone and metal. The skin covers the bone and in this case the bone grows out in a circular hug whilst the skin unfolds naturally into the bones structure. Metal, mirroring the strength of bone. is transformed through forging and welding, from cold rigidity to dynamic vitality. Quoting the process of decay and regeneration within the body and the natural process of death and decay within the human body. This piece touches on the weakness of the human body and the need for spiritual transcendence. It is at once fragile and strong.

“Boundless Flesh” is about the gradual and inevitable takeover of the human body. Bones, skin and form are changing in an inseparable whole, where each has its own beauty, but the indivisibility of the process makes its beauty apparent. The piece brings up the question of vulnerability and strength, where bones are giving support and skin answers with movement. This tension is between the idea of fixity and becoming. The body is not stable, it is always becoming. With that in mind, the piece questions what is it that we become and how can we withstand?

Title: Boundless Flesh

Year: 2024

Medium: Steel, Plaster, Fabric and Latex

Dimension: L130cm x W116cm x H112cm

Title: Beyond the Body

Year: 2025

Medium: Steel and Latex

Dimension: L70cm x W50cm x H80cm

“Beyond the Body” is about the gradual and inevitable takeover of the human body. Bones, skin and form are changing in an inseparable whole, where each has its own beauty, but the indivisibility of the process makes its beauty apparent. The piece brings up the question of vulnerability and strength, where bones are giving support and skin answers with movement. This tension is between the idea of fixity and becoming. The body is not stable, it is always becoming. With that in mind, the piece questions what is it that we become and how can we withstand?

Title: Beyond the Body

Year: 2025

Medium: Steel and Latex

Dimension: L70cm x W50cm x H80cm

“Beneath The Body” provides us with a humanoid figure that is at part and part of the familiar and the un-familiar. Its scale and attitude invokes our broad understanding of the human body, but its skin and interior has been stretched, contorted and deformed by pulling and growing. There seems to be a number of pressures pushing, resisting and responding to each other. The forms are not anatomical, but more of a ‘warwick’ – a place where organic and synthetic pressure deform, intertwine and evolve. Inhabiting the body is usually a sufficiently stable relation, here it is left for you to consider.

Title: Beneath The Body

Year: 2025

Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex

Dimension: L115cm x W70cm x H215cm

“Growth I & II” continues with this examination of the body as a state of constant growth and mutation, drawing attention to the subtle changes taking place inside the body and the new states that arise. Blooming skeletal structures and organ-like alien forms grow slowly, ambiguously, transcending the natural/grotesque boundary. These unsettling hybrid forms refer to the fluid and indeterminate states of identity and existence. The tension here is not violent, but in the unknown quality of this slow proliferation, which makes us aware of how we relate to our bodies in a state of vulnerability and reconstruction, such that the living is multiple and complex.

Title: Growth I

Year: 2025

Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex

Dimension: L28cm x W26cm x H18cm

Title: Growth II

Year: 2025

Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex

Dimension: L20cm x W20cm x H12cm

Title：Stretched Form
Year: 2025
Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex
“Stretched Form” is about the body in a tense position. It shows skin like materials being stretched to their breaking point almost tearing. It shows something physical and emotional. It shows the pulling and stretching, holding in and tearing apart. It shows pressure and resistance.

Steel hooks are essential to the work. They provide anchors and give a sense of skeleton. They feel foreign and invasive. In response, the latex stretches like human skin. It reveals what is underneath. It highlights a sense of vulnerability.

The form of the work is also alienated. It comments on identity. It reveals that identity is not set in stone. It is constantly changing and unstable. In addition, it highlights quiet strength. It demonstrates resistance that is contained within the work.

Title: Mutation, part of me
Year: 2025
Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex

“Mutation, part of me,” depicts an internal shift that is hard to see: slow growth, expansion, and the formation of new shapes. You have the bones of the human body, but something new starts to form, neither entirely foreign nor familiar.I don’t show mutation as a split, more a continuation. The image is about an internal process of becoming. I overlay organic texture onto staged imagined anatomy. Maybe also we can see that change is not what separates us from ourselves, but it’s just another way of being ourselves.

Title: Mutation, part of me
Year: 2025
Medium: Steel, Fabric and Latex

Contact details

Email: hongruzhang01@gmail.com

Instagram: hongru_zhanggggg

Hongru Zhang (b. 1996, China) is a London-based artist. She holds a BA in Performance Art and Practice from Central Saint Martins and recently completed an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art. She currently lives and works in London.

Zhang’s sculpture investigates the demarcation between the physical body and sociological identity constructed around the body. The work challenges the natural definitions of body, identity and society, and forces us to reflect on the definitions and the impacts of these terms to our understanding of self and other. She uses unexpected, even ‘monstrous’, forms to make us feel alienated and afraid. These forms criticise the human condition and reflect on the body’s relationship with culture and society.

The most fundamental concept in Zhang’s work is transformation, both physically and spiritually. The body is a weak and fragile container of change. It is both life and death, matter and spirit. Metal is what she forges and welds with; it is strong like a bone, to survive. It is weak when it is liquid and molten, but by forging and welding, it is changed from cold metal to living, curving, breathing forms. She invites us to explore the changing nature of the body in order to engage with the work. The work explores the changes in the body – life and death, matter and spirit, impermanence and identity.

EDUCATION

2015-2018 Bachelor of Art, Central Saint Martins

2024-2025 Master of Art, Royal College of Art

Group Exhibitions

2025‘Drifting Selves’, Downstairs Brixton, London, UK

2025‘Nothing holds on it’s own’, Annex,London, UK

2025‘Grey With a Glimmer’, Indra Gallery, London, UK

2025‘The Shape Surrounding’, Felix,London, UK

2025‘Field of Clarity’, Photofusion Gallery, London, UK

2025‘[ ] 留空之地 What Remains Open’，Safehouse, London, UK

2025‘Footfalls Echo’，Safehouse, London, UK

2025‘Assemble / Fall’，Somers Gallery, London, UK

Group Exhibitions

2024‘Festival of Festus- Art and Anthropology’, Royalcollege of art, Hanger gallery, London , UK

2023‘Work In Progress Show’, Anken Avenue, Shanghai,China

2018‘S. P. A’，Royal Albert Hall，London,UK

2018‘Psycho’，Black lab，Central Saint Martins,London,UK

2018‘Naked Not Nude’，Platform Theatre, Central Saint Martins, London ,UK

2017‘Music of What Happened’，Royal College of Music，Kensington, London,UK

2016‘Rude Health’，Trinity Laban，London, UK