Artist Statement

Sans Xiao Han is an artist living and working between London and Shanghai. His practice employs photography as a methodology to continuously explore the complex relationships between individuals and society, communities and their environments. For him, images are not merely tools of documentation and representation, but also of research, dialogue, and intervention. Trained in art school, he is also active as a fashion photographer in Shanghai. Moving between the fast-paced production of fashion imagery and the slower rhythm of personal projects, he has established a methodological “mismatch of speeds” through which he examines the very logic of image-making.

His work often traverses between lived experience and structural issues, attending both to the details of everyday life and to the broader contexts of social development. In recent years, his focus has turned to how social processes shape the conditions and boundaries of collective identities, and how individuals navigate contradictions and tensions in search of survival strategies. Combining long-term fieldwork photography, archival materials, and open-ended narratives, Han Xiao seeks to make viewing itself a site for rethinking social relations and the conditions of existence.

Biography

Sans is a photographic artist living and working between London and Shanghai. He graduated with a BA in Photography from the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, Liaoning, in 2015, and received an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2024.

In recent years, his works have been exhibited at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, China (2021), the Lishui International Photography Festival (2021), and his photobook Invisible Conversation was presented at Tate Modern, UK (2024). He has also received multiple international photography awards, including an Honorable Mention at the ND International Photography Awards (2022) and being shortlisted for the LensCulture Art Photography Awards (2023).