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Textiles (MA)

Han Zang

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Han Zang is an artist, who creates textile art and installations, working in a mix of media: fabric, ready-made, photography and moving images. She usually situates handmade textile pieces with the practice of photography and film. Haunted by her working experience in urban architecture in China, her work constructs a psychogeography of her experiences in a violently shifting urban landscape.

Her work sometimes exudes an air of temporality and poetry, while being full of curious imagery. Sometimes it is the dandelion embraced tightly on the cotton pants passing by the field, sometimes it is the traces of needle and thread shuttling on the fabric and paper, sometimes it is the story of long-ago memories merging with dreams

She focuses on combining photography with textiles, and more specifically, on using the language of textiles to translate and express a critique and desire for the images in my own eyes.

Degree Details

School of DesignTextiles (MA)RCA2023 at Battersea and Kensington

RCA Kensington, Darwin Building, Seventh floor

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This project is based on a dream I had as a child in my hometown, a person with an unbalanced mind who wanders through the countryside talking to himself on the phone. I wanted to show my perspective and affect through a combination of film, narrative textiles and sound, to recreate the traces of this neglected character.

This man lives in a cottage by the river that I pass every evening on my walks. I often secretly observe him watching his shadow, picking up mulberries, lying on the riverbank, and leaning against the window muttering and murmuring on a blue telephone.

These scenes were etched into my mind, but when I returned to the hut, I was in a trance; the phone did not seem to be picked up by him, but rather my strong desire to confide in the dream picked up the receiver.

In my search for traces of the story, I returned to the area, roaming the fields, recording the sounds of nature where he had walked, listening to the recordings, transferring photographic ink to fabric and getting the faded images of my memories. I then dyed bits of discarded silk in the lighter colours of the photographs and folded them together to create a "map" of the green of the fields soles of the cloth shoes I used to wear as a child inspired me to tie-dye a variety of fabrics. The dyed threads were embroidered on fabric and rice paper, visualising the traces and speed of the threads dragging across the flat surface.


In Blue – I went back to the hut where the man lived and filmed his story with my friends. The full version of the film is at the Vimeo link.https://vimeo.com/838739273?share=copy
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Field Map
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Narrative Dream Painting
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Points in the film
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Track of the thread
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Stained Traces Blue Telephone and Twilight
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Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU