To Witness,
To Resist
Erosion is inevitable—walls collapse, courtyards vanish, and what was once familiar dissolves into reconstruction. Architecture is rewritten, not preserved. The spatial rituals once embedded in daily life dissipate, replaced by an order indifferent to memory.
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Yet absence is never empty. It lingers in dust settling over exposed foundations, in the silence where voices once gathered. To preserve is not to restore, but to hold still—before disappearance becomes a conclusion.
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Photo by Allison Gretchko
Qianyang’s work operates on this threshold. Between what is lost and what remains, between material and trace, it captures the fleeting imprint of structures before they are reduced to dust.
To witness is to resist erasure.
Xiushui Street, Ningbo, China
Jan, 2024
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Yet absence is never empty. It lingers in dust settling over exposed foundations, in the silence where voices once gathered. To preserve is not to restore, but to hold still—before disappearance becomes a conclusion.
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Photo by Allison Gretchko
Qianyang’s work operates on this threshold. Between what is lost and what remains, between material and trace, it captures the fleeting imprint of structures before they are reduced to dust.
To witness is to resist erasure.
Xiushui Street, Ningbo, China
Jan, 2024
Interviewing
Kong Qianyang
The conversation with Qianyang unfolded as an exchange of questions, a process of mutual reflection. Thoughtful inquiry and incisive counterpoints leave a deeper impression than direct explanations.
EST8: First, congratulations on your remarkable work. The theme of Cultural Heritage Preservation is one we find particularly compelling. What stands out is your background in Fashion and Textile Design—yet you've completely abandoned textile-based techniques, choosing an entirely different medium for expression.
Kong Qianyang: It’s been a cross-disciplinary shift from fashion to the humanities. But even in fashion, I often worked with deconstruction, which is ultimately about breaking down and reconstructing. Moving from textiles to geology was a risk, but the underlying logic remains the same.
Textiles—like stitches—layer and interweave, just as this series does, using slaked lime to form stratified lamination. Both share a process of accumulation and deconstruction. Whether through knitting or stucco, it all comes down to layering, covering, settling—only to be dismantled again. These actions mirror the evolution of cultural heritage: sedimenting, eroding, and layering a new on the detritus.
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Photo by Allison Gretchko
Kong Qianyang: I’m not an architect, nor did I approach this work from a strictly professional standpoint. My pieces lean toward replication—yet that’s precisely what I wanted to explore: City’s ruins. A city’s scars are its extensions of the past. The ancestral residences are re-erected to new complexes or restored to adapt with commerce centres are eventually “healing” to be a scar manifesting the past that has never been passed. The remnants that survive—broken facade, crumbling structures—are those deemed historically significant, while most of the residential environment is erased without a trace.
EST8:That resonates. In Lingnan, for example, only a handful of traditional buildings remain. During the Soviet-influenced era of urban planning, most were demolished and rebuilt.
Kong Qianyang: It happened where I’m from as well. This series of artwork is based on Wu Residence, a Hui-style architectural complex on Xiushui Street and Yongfeng Street in Haishu District, Ningbo. Since 2024, it has been undergoing redevelopment, merging into a commercial complex. These transformations leave me conflicted, which makes me even more determined to preserve fleeting moments through my work.
Xiaowen Street, Ningbo, China
2020
Last Words Of The Dust I2020
Cotton Drill, Cigarette Ash, Paper Ash, Wall Paint and PVA
69x61cm, 2024
EST8: Do you think architecture influences human behavior?
Kong Qianyang: Not for everyone, but mostly. Past generations lived in a more communal way—homes had courtyards, fostering shared spaces and interactions. Today, neighborly relationships are increasingly distant. The shift wasn’t organic; it was imposed. That dissatisfaction and melancholy drives people to search for resemblance to a lost way of life.
EST8: It’s a delicate balance. Looking back can easily slip into a stalemate of nostalgia, but resisting it entirely risks severing cultural continuity. How do you navigate that tension?
Kong Qianyang: Though my work engages with the past, it isn’t about reconstructing it in full—just capturing a single suspended moment. Last Words of the Dust lingers in that final pause before ruins are flattened, before the last fragment is taken away. A silent scream, frozen in time. Even residential ruins should be documented, commemorated, much like historical monuments. This idea is gradually shaping my approach to art, leading into a deeper exploration of ruins.
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
EST8: Yet even if people long to return to past glories, they often can’t. A retreat into an idyllic past is nearly impossible—because the very notion of life has changed by time.
Kong Qianyang: But who defines the trajectory of modern life?
EST8: Perhaps it’s as simple as economics. Over decades of rapid development, China instinctively erased traces of its past, constructing an identity that aligned with Western validation.
Kong Qianyang: But why does progress demand erasure like demolition? Must development always stand in opposition to cultural heritage?
Xiushui Street, Ningbo, China
Jan, 2024
Cotton Drill, Cigarette Ash, Paper Ash, Wall Paint and PVA
69x61cm, 2024
EST8: Perhaps it stems from a lack of cultural confidence. Economic structures dictate priorities. In the Maoist era, survival took precedence—there was little space for cultural discourse. When people struggled to meet basic needs, how could preservation have been a priority?
Kong Qianyang: During The Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were disgraced. Culture wasn’t just undervalued—it was seen as a threat. Even now, Chinese culture often finds itself overshadowed by Japanese culture in the west. It frustrates me. It feels like a loss.
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995
Three Gelatin Silver Prints
148 x 121 cm each, Printed 2017
© Ai Weiwei
Kong Qianyang: Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn profoundly impacted me. Artifacts are vessels of culture, but if their significance that is carried within the artifacts is dismissed, if cultural consciousness itself is neglected, then what do those artifacts represent?
EST8: Japan’s post-war economic transformation was swift. With survival no longer an immediate concern, they had the space to explore, reconstruct, and refine their cultural essence—placing them decades ahead. In China today, the prevailing focus remains on economic growth and national progress. Forward momentum, at all costs. Few pause to look back.
Kong Qianyang: That reminds me of Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Caught by the Tides (2024). There’s a scene where Zhao Tao stands in the middle of a vast ruin—overwhelmed, powerless. It underscores how insignificant we are in the face of time’s passage. In the end, you either accept it or you don’t.
EST8: And if you don’t?
Kong Qianyang: Then I won’t. Before the ruins are cleared, I will freeze them in time. A final image, before silence takes over. If everything is forced to be erased, I insist on preserving its last breath. To see it is to recognize both the past and the future.
EST8: Cultural accumulation is the path we have walked. But to persist in exploring art and culture requires a particular sensibility and conviction.
Kong Qianyang: Yes. In the end, what we’re discussing isn’t so different from broader existential questions. Without that sensibility, we are no different from machines. AI is efficient, but can it truly feel?
Xiushui Street, Ningbo, China
Jan, 2024
Cotton Drill, Cigarette Ash, Paper Ash, Wall Paint and PVA
69x61cm, 2024
EST8: Perhaps it stems from a lack of cultural confidence. Economic structures dictate priorities. In the Maoist era, survival took precedence—there was little space for cultural discourse. When people struggled to meet basic needs, how could preservation have been a priority?
Kong Qianyang: During The Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were disgraced. Culture wasn’t just undervalued—it was seen as a threat. Even now, Chinese culture often finds itself overshadowed by Japanese culture in the west. It frustrates me. It feels like a loss.
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995
Three Gelatin Silver Prints
148 x 121 cm each, Printed 2017
© Ai Weiwei
Kong Qianyang: Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn profoundly impacted me. Artifacts are vessels of culture, but if their significance that is carried within the artifacts is dismissed, if cultural consciousness itself is neglected, then what do those artifacts represent?
EST8: Japan’s post-war economic transformation was swift. With survival no longer an immediate concern, they had the space to explore, reconstruct, and refine their cultural essence—placing them decades ahead. In China today, the prevailing focus remains on economic growth and national progress. Forward momentum, at all costs. Few pause to look back.
Kong Qianyang: That reminds me of Jia Zhangke’s latest film, Caught by the Tides (2024). There’s a scene where Zhao Tao stands in the middle of a vast ruin—overwhelmed, powerless. It underscores how insignificant we are in the face of time’s passage. In the end, you either accept it or you don’t.
Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke
2024
2024
EST8: And if you don’t?
Kong Qianyang: Then I won’t. Before the ruins are cleared, I will freeze them in time. A final image, before silence takes over. If everything is forced to be erased, I insist on preserving its last breath. To see it is to recognize both the past and the future.
EST8: Cultural accumulation is the path we have walked. But to persist in exploring art and culture requires a particular sensibility and conviction.
Kong Qianyang: Yes. In the end, what we’re discussing isn’t so different from broader existential questions. Without that sensibility, we are no different from machines. AI is efficient, but can it truly feel?
CREDITS
Back Drop Photo 1, 2
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Last Words Of The Dust II
Calico, Paper, Plaster, Off-cut Fabric, Water-based Pigment and Fabric Hardening
88x70x72cm, 2024
Kong Qianyang (b. 1998, Ningbo), London-based Chinese artist whose works span across sculpture, photography, poem and textile. She has been living in the UK since 2017. From 2017 to 2020, she studied Knitwear for Fashion at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. After moving to London in 2021, she pursued and received a Master’s degree in Textiles at the Royal College of Art in 2023.
Ruin is the centre of her practice. The ruins laid out an incomplete chronicle that has written the causality of existential ruptures and illuminates the future sequences, from which her practice stems a strong affinity with. Amid the ruins, she perceives herself as the broken masonry, stuccoed since two centuries ago, holding the lingering warmth of her ancestors’ palms; as the void suspended between the brackets and façades of the teetering buildings, bearing witness to the cracks forming in the mortise-and-tenon joints of ancient architecture; as a particle of dust, drifting here and there, destined to be swept away by the inevitable tide.
Fascinated by landscapes, artifacts and craftsmanship, and architecture that testify to geographical shifts, changing social ideologies, and evolving residential environments, she strives to recontextualize those relics through a contemporary lens.
EDUCATION
2022-2023 MA, Textiles, Royal College of Art, London
2021-2022 Graduate Diploma, Art and Design, Royal College of Art, London
2017-2020 BA (hons) Fashion and Textile Design: knitwear for fashion, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton
EXHIBITIONS
2025 Heritage, Curated by The Daughters United, Broadwick Studio, London
2025 Upcoming, Blue, Curated by Ellen Kydd, London
2023 A Cocoon Room, Degree Show, Royal College of Art Kensington Campus, London
2023 Calculate The Memory, Durham University Charity Fashion Show (DUCFS)
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 The Holy Art Magazine, Issue 07, London
2025 Upcoming Publication, ReadingCub, Beijing Zhijapan Culture Comunciation Co., Ltd
2024 Elle's Monologue by Ellen Kydd, Online Publication
2022 Red Is on Red, Published by Royal College of Art, Online Publication
2025 Heritage, Curated by The Daughters United, Broadwick Studio, London
2025 Upcoming, Blue, Curated by Ellen Kydd, London
2023 A Cocoon Room, Degree Show, Royal College of Art Kensington Campus, London
2023 Calculate The Memory, Durham University Charity Fashion Show (DUCFS)
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 The Holy Art Magazine, Issue 07, London
2025 Upcoming Publication, ReadingCub, Beijing Zhijapan Culture Comunciation Co., Ltd
2024 Elle's Monologue by Ellen Kydd, Online Publication
2022 Red Is on Red, Published by Royal College of Art, Online Publication
Caught by the Tides, 2024 Chinese drama film directed by Jia Zhangke, written by Wan Jianhuan and Jia Zhangke, based on footage across 22 years, some from Jia's previous films, in an impressionistic non-linear blend of fiction and non-fiction.
CONTENT CREATIVE: EST8 MAG