Mengmeng Zhang (b. 1997, Jiangsu, China; based in London) is a painter whose intuitive practice spans acrylic, gouache, ink and pastel to explore memory, displacement and fragmented realities. Working at the intersection of psychogeography and phenomenology, Zhang creates layered compositions that trace the displacement between memory and the present — between inner emotion and outer environment. Her stylised characters and intuitive colour choices embody moods, actions and fictional experiences drawn from personal reflections on everyday life.
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About
Zhang's paintings begin with feeling rather than plan — colour chosen intuitively, marks made in response to psychological states rather than observed reality. Her subjects exist in an ambiguous middle ground: stylised figures that are simultaneously specific and universal, caught in moments of transition, displacement or quiet suspension. The fragmentation of living experience — of being between cultures, between memory and the present, between the self one was and the self one is becoming — runs through every aspect of her practice.
Having studied across three continents — at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Camberwell College of Arts in London, and the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL — Zhang's work carries the accumulated sensibility of multiple art education traditions. Her MFA at the Slade, completed in 2025, marked a significant development in her practice, deepening her engagement with the materiality of painting and the philosophical questions that underpin it. She is the winner of the 2025 Almacantar Studio Award.
Education
- Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, MFA Painting, 2023 – 2025 (London, UK)
- Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, MA Fine Art Painting, 2019 – 2021 (London, UK)
- China Academy of Art, BA Digital Publishing, 2015 – 2019 (Hangzhou, China)
Select Exhibitions
- Moving Principle, Arusha Gallery, 2025 (London, UK)
- Illusion, A Single Piece Gallery, 2025 (Sydney, Australia) — Solo Exhibition
- Line Shifu and Bakery Shifu, Small-Time Project, 2025 (London, UK)
- Pareidolia, Mandy Zhang Art, 2025 (London, UK)
- Between Worlds, MeSo Ventures at The Hilight, Battersea, 2025 (London, UK)
- Out of Place, Bonian Space, April – May 2024 (Beijing, China) — Solo Exhibition
- Floating, The Bomb Factory, 2023 (London, UK)
- UNMUTE, Copeland Gallery, 2021 (London, UK)
Awards & Prizes
- Almacantar Studio Award, 2025 — Winner
- New Wave Art Prize, Bloomsbury Festival, 2024 — Shortlisted
- Hari Art Prize, 2024 — Shortlisted