Statement

Between Boundaries

Xinying Zhang was born in Hebei, China, and currently lives and works in Bonn, Germany. She received a formal artistic education and her practice moves between the tradition of Chinese ink painting and contemporary Western modes of expression. Within this field, she develops a visual language that unfolds between abstraction and suggestion, shaped by inner tension.
Her work does not follow a linear trajectory, but has evolved through repeated experiences at the boundaries of existence.
In 2016, a sudden hypertensive crisis brought her to the threshold between life and death.

She did not retreat.

Under extreme conditions, she chose to endure the consequences—placing her own body at risk in order to sustain another form of life.
Throughout a prolonged and demanding process, she experienced irreversible loss and profound physical limits, continuing her life under ongoing uncertainty.
These experiences fundamentally reshaped her understanding of body, time, and existence.
In this context, art became a means of continuation.
Through her work, she transforms experiences that resist articulation into forms that can be perceived.

Since then, her practice has undergone a fundamental shift—
moving away from form as such toward an engagement with fragility, transience, and renewal.

In her paintings, color carries emotional intensity, while structure retains traces of time.
Each layer marks a transformation of experience; each change affirms a renewed sense of existence.
Her work does not provide answers, but opens a space of perception within uncertainty.