Zihan Wang

Biography

Zihan Wang is a doctoral researcher at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Her practice-led research examines human–AI collaborative creativity through posthumanist theory, with a particular focus on hybrid authorship, posthuman subjectivity, and AI-collaborated visual art. Her doctoral project asks how authorship can be understood when visual artworks emerge through interaction between the artist, AI systems, hand-drawn sketches, image references, prompts, iterative selection, and post-generation editing.

Wang’s artistic practice investigates the fluid boundary between organic and algorithmic creation. Working across AI-generated image-making, moving image, installation, and interactive systems, she uses human–plant hybridity as both a visual language and a research method. Her work examines how bodies, plants and generative systems can become entangled, producing images that unsettle fixed distinctions between the human and the non-human, the handmade and the computational, and the artist’s intention and the AI-generated outcome.

In 2026, Wang presented a London-based exhibition on human–plant hybrid imagery, bringing together her own hand-drawn works and AI-collaborated images. The exhibition explored the visual uncertainty produced when human drawing and AI generation are placed in close relation. By making it difficult for viewers to distinguish which images were manually drawn and which were produced through AI collaboration, the project questioned conventional assumptions about artistic originality, manual skill, and individual authorship. Rather than treating AI as a separate technical process, the exhibition positioned human and AI image-making as part of a shared visual field, where authorship emerges through ambiguity, negotiation, and material transformation.

Her recent projects also include Human-Plant Continuum (London, 2025), a triple-screen projection exploring symbiotic ecosystems through AI-collaborated imagery; Posthuman Subjectivity Exhibition (London, 2024), which examined generative portraiture through posthuman and assemblage-based thinking; and Desireless Machines – Posthuman Bodies, presented at the European Blockchain Art Conference in Valencia in 2023.

Wang’s cross-disciplinary background combines illustrations, digital media, and computational visual culture. Her practice has received international recognition, including the International Design Awards Gold Award, MUSE Creative Awards Gold Prize, and Vega Digital Awards Gold Honor.
Alongside her doctoral research, Wang has led applied creative technology projects involving AI-generated imagery, virtual identity, and interactive digital humans. She led the development of the Marco Polo AI Virtual Human Project for the University of Warwick, an AI-driven cultural avatar developed in collaboration with Professor Sai Gu, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. The project explores how digital humans can support cross-cultural communication and public engagement through AI-based interaction.

Her research and creative practice have been presented in academic, cultural, and technology contexts, including the Oxford AI Summit, the Sino-British Tech Summit, and Tsinghua University’s Art-Science Convergence exhibition. Her work has also been profiled by CGTN UK in relation to artistic experimentation with AI. Across her research, practice, and professional projects, Wang is concerned with how AI can be understood not as a replacement for the artist, but as a collaborator within a distributed creative process.