Staring into the abyss

Weihang Zhu, 26, also a Royal College of Art alumna, uses digital and physical media to explore existential questions of identity, mortality and embodiment.

"I wanted to create something philosophical as well as artistic," says Zhu, who hails from Beijing.

"I'm trying to draw from existentialist thought to examine how individuals construct the self in response to external stimuli," she says.

Her works have already been exhibited in London's Filet gallery and Alsolike Gallery, as well as the London Craft Week in 2025. In her diptych Sending You a Death Poem, Zhu has used metal and shadowy imagery to evoke the omnipresence of death — not as an endpoint, but as a persistent force woven into everyday life.

For Zhu, death is not something to fear, but a lens through which life gains meaning. Her immersive installations challenge viewers to confront their own mortality and think what it means to exist, she says.

Death is a force involved in shaping the "self", she explains, a way of perceiving the essence of life. She sees death as an integral part of existence, the body as a manifestation of "being toward death", and explores in visual language how perceptions of death play a role in shaping the "self".

Kam Raoofi, Lead Technical Artist of the Digital Media Lab at Imperial College London, observed that through abstract imagery and immersive forms, Zhu examines how the body mediates identity and how personal experiences of death, desire and disintegration shape our sense of self.

"Her work translates digital processes into spatial, gallery-based installations that challenge the screen as the primary site of interaction,"Raoofi says.