ART CITIES: Hong Kong-Yin Xiuzhen

Yin Xiuzhen began her career after earning a BA from Capital Normal University’s Fine Arts Department, Beijing, in 1989. She is best known for her sculptures and installations comprising secondhand objects like clothing, shoes, and suitcases. Inspired by the rapidly changing cultural environment of her native Beijing, Yin arranges and reconfigures these recycled items to draw out their individual and collective histories.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Yin Xiuzhen’s assembled materials operate as sculptural documents of memory, alluding to the lives of individuals who are often neglected in the drive toward rapid development, excessive urbanization, and the growing global economy. The exhibition “Everywhere” marks Yin Xiuzhen’s first presentation in Hong Kong and spotlights her ongoing explorations of materiality. Among the 40 sculptures and installations on view, which date from 2008 to 2022 are Yin’s new series “The Surging Waves Chronicles”, which has never before been exhibited publicly. Yin is known for her deeply resonant installations incorporating everyday objects and materials, from used clothes and fabrics to porcelain and cement to fruits and plants. These layered, lyrical works—which serve as repositories of cultural memory—capture the undercurrents of disorientation and unease in modern society. Yin’s upcoming exhibition with Pace will bring together several bodies of work, most of which are being shown in Hong Kong for the first time, that reflect her longstanding interest in the variable qualities of her chosen materials. Transmutations of seemingly static materials into lively, vital entities are central to Yin’s practice. In recent years, she has adopted porcelain as the core material for her work—compared to other materials that evolve slowly over time, porcelain undergoes extraordinary and rapid changes during its firing. At high temperatures, the originally soft, unremarkable clay becomes crystalline, cooling and solidifying as a glossy, talismanic object. The physical and symbolic energy transformations that take place as part of this process are especially fascinating to the artist. With Yin’s latest series, titled The Surging Waves Chronicles and featured in her exhibition with Pace in Hong Kong, the artist embraces greater physicality in her work with porcelain clay, pushing and squeezing the raw material to create flesh-like folds on the surfaces of thick ceramic panels. The title of the work suggests its relationship to the Chinese tradition of ancient literati who make use of scenery to express emotions, and, on a visual level, the rolls and layers of porcelain clay ebb like waves, recalling Virginia Woolf’s writings about the tide of life. The artist’s iconic fragments of worn clothes emerge from the gaps between the waves. These fabrics are changing slowly over a longer span of time, recording the life experiences of their owners in the fibers. The Hong Kong exhibition also includes works from Yin’s recent “Ripple” series, which was first presented at the 2020 Jinan Biennale. The “Ripple” installations incorporate organic materials (various fruits and plants) as part of her investigations of change and ephemerality. Since the 1990s, she has used materials such as fruit and food in her installations, allowing the works to change over time. With these works, the artist documents fleeting encounters among materials as well as the exchanges between viewers and the artwork. Through a kind of temporary dependence, the artist hopes to establish a continuous relationship between the artwork and its viewers. Social and economic conditions have been focuses of Yin’s practice throughout her career. In recent years, she has used art’s spiritual powers to consider these issues against the transient, impermanent nature of human life. In addition to the characteristic materials commonly seen in her works, particularly the old clothing thought of as humanity’s ‘second skin’ the “Wall Instrument” series extend her creative process to the use of ceramics. While ceramics are also quite commonplace, their exquisite nature gives form to a subtle sense of distance. Old clothing, soft and warm, is inextricably tied to memory and the experiences of human senses and, through Yin’s process, are embedded into the porcelain works, solidifying and preserving them in time. Ceramics themselves are transformed from common earth into exquisite forms once fired in a kiln; this transformation doubtlessly carries with it even greater symbolic significance. As a process, and the changes it signifies, the porcelain works indicate that the artist’s ‘bodily’ understanding of creative materials is probing a spiritual world focused on form. Thus, the ceramics that appear in the form of ‘instruments’ in this work may be viewed as ‘spiritual instruments,’ which are vessels that carry complex and vivid lives, guiding viewers to a higher plane of understanding. Her porcelain works reflect her ongoing experimentation with the material. Closely associated with Chinese history and tradition, porcelain has been the focus of Yin’s practice in recent years, and its materiality has served as the impetus for significant variability in her sculptural work during this time. Through a nontraditional method of porcelain firing in her “Wall Instrument” series, Yin realizes subtle yet abundant variation in color and texture on the works surfaces, while also allowing the spontaneity of this firing process to serve as a form of stimulation and dialogue. Ultimately, through this process, the original, smooth porcelain plates in these works take on natural undulations, wrinkles, and cracks through Yin’s interventions. Within these pieces, the artist also embeds fragments of worn clothes, so parts of the clothing appear in the demarcations in the porcelain surfaces. In encompassing the experiences of those who wore these clothes, the works mimic biological skin, creating psychological cues and evoking sensory perception from the viewers while acting as poignant carriers of memories.

Photo: Yin Xiuzhen, Portable City: Hangzhou, 2011, suitcase, clothes, magnifying glass, map, sound element11″ x 59-13/16″ x 34-5/8″ (28 cm x 152 cm x 88 cm), © Yin Xiuzhen, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace Gallery, 12/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong, China, Duration: 25/11/2022-5/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/