Saint Joan of BFD x Hangover Square

This event in London showcases new works by artist and Postgraduate Researcher Hang Zhang, alongside an open studio and performances by poet and writer Danielle Wilde.

Hang Zhang and Danielle Wilde will present an incredible evening at the beautiful Holy Trinity Church in Islington, London – hosted by the Florence Trust and The Writers’ Room.

The evening begins with Danielle’s Open Studio from 4 to 6pm at Wild Pansy Press: The Writers’ Room, where you can visit her installation, buy the Joan of Arc pamphlet and talk to Danielle about her work. Later that evening (at 7pm and 8pm within Holy Trinity Church) Danielle will performing her sonnet sequence, ‘Saint Joan of BFD’.

Building on her MA Fine Art degree show project (University of Leeds, 2022), Hang Zhang will open her new solo show – Hangover Square – at 6pm at Holy Trinity Project Space, next door to The Writers’ Room. Hangover Square initially featured a performative neon installation exploring how she reclaimed her body from patriarchy through tattoos. This exhibition expands on that project, presenting a more comprehensive scene that includes milestone works from her practice, alongside a new installation symbolising the deconstruction and reconstruction of the original Hangover Square.

The exhibition also includes miniature works showcased in a doll’s house by fine art alumni from the University of Leeds.

While the two artists’ practices may seem distinct, they share an intimate common approach: using satire, metaphors, and bibliography as façades to expose vulnerabilities around identity and desire.

This event has been made possible with the generous support from the Florence Trust.

Venue

Holy Trinity Church
Cloudesley Square
Islington
London N1 0HN

About Hang Zhang and ‘Hangover Square’

Hang Zhang is a Chinese artist and researcher working between London and Leeds. Her art and research explore the intersections of place, beings, and stigma, with a particular emphasis on nonhuman entities in human history. She examines social and species constructions through the lens of inequality, unpacking how these frameworks shape our understanding of the world.
 
As a full-time immigrant and part-time migrant, a borderline woman/non-binary person, and someone with a background straddling both working- and middle-class environments, Zhang’s practice also deeply draws from her own experiences of social alienation and a persistent sense of dislocation.
 
Hangover Square began in 2022 as a performative neon installation in Leeds, where Zhang reflected on reclaiming her female body from patriarchal structures through tattoos. Three years later, Hangover Square has evolved into Zhang’s first solo exhibition in London. This expanded iteration explores vulnerabilities in identity and desire, reframed through critical theories of class, gender, and power. The audiences are invited to navigate a series of installations reflecting Zhang’s process of deconstructive self-questioning, framed by recurring themes in her work, such as belonging, otherness, and nostalgia.

Hang Zhang’s Hangover Square at Holy Trinity Church runs from 9 February to 1 March, Wednesday to Sunday, 12 to 6pm.

Follow Hang on Instagram @hangzhang.art.

About Danielle Wilde and ‘Saint Joan of BFD’

Danielle Wilde is a poet and writer from Yorkshire. Her words have appeared in Vogue, Dazed, Stylist and the fevered dreamscapes of tracksuit nihilists across the North of England. Danielle has performed for Queer Bloomsbury festival at Charleston House, for Ultraviolet at KKWEER Arts and in collaboration with Caleb Femi as part of his Sloghouse collective in performances at Deptford Literature Festival and Bold Tendencies. In 2024, FEM Press published Deep North, her first pamphlet which examines class, culture, desire and the queer hauntology of the North.

During her residency with The Writers’ Room, Danielle has been producing a sonnet cycle inspired by the mythology of Joan of Arc and set in a Bradford Catholic Girls School in the 90s. Illustrated with collages made from 90s teen magazines, this multi-disciplinary piece examines faith, queerness, patriarchy and violence aligned with the 14 Stations of the Cross.

Follow Danielle on Instagram @danielle_wilde.

Poster for performances of St Joan of BFD by Danielle Wilde, taking place at Holy Trinity Church, Islington.

About The Writers’s Room and Wild Pansy Press

The Wild Pansy Press was established in 1995 by Simon Lewandowski and Chris Taylor. It is a collective art practice and small publishing house which has built up a considerable catalogue of books and projects, often linking a publication to an exhibition in ways which extend and confound the usual notions of a catalogue. Based in Leeds and London, The Wild Pansy Press actively develops partnerships with other groups to build a network of practitioners who explore and advance publication – in its widest sense – as both a distributional strategy and medium of practice.

The Writers’ Room is a working and meeting space made available to The Wild Pansy Press by the Florence Trust as part of their new studios and gallery development in the former Holy Trinity Church building in Cloudesley Square, Islington. It is a site for intense full- or part-time residential periods at the intersection of fine art and literature – be that of art writing, memoir, auto-fiction, science fiction, fan-fiction, zine culture, sound art, broadcasting or the spoken word. The Writers’s Room is co-led by Hang Zhang, Lu Rose Cunningham, Simon Lewandowski and Christopher Taylor.

Feature image

Hang Zhang, Hangover Square, 2025. Holy Trinity Church, Islington, London. Photo by Steven Allbutt.