Kong Lingnan was born in 1983 in Jilin Province, China. She received a bachelor's degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and a master's degree from Chelsea Colleague of Arts, University of the Arts London. She currently lives and works in Beijing.
Her early works portray a world of uniformity - one where the self and the universe is one - with scenes such as islands and constellations that take on the effect of a neon-like glow. She contemplates human condition and transformation from an observer's perspective, and approaches spirituality and culture through the individual experience. In recent years, under the influence of the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung and her interest in mysticism, she tries to visualize the hidden bond between human and the unseen world, and shifts her practice towards an exploration of the inner world - its contradictions and microcosmos, its fire and billow - in seeking of the fruit of the subconscious. Focusing on transmutation of spiritual symbols in alchemy, Kong Lingnan's nuanced small-scale oil paintings on wood offer psychological portraits of friends and imprints of the inner landscape, outlining the sorrow and joy of personal emotions.
