YIn Xiuzhen's installation "Digestive Cavity" on temporary display at the Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent


Yin Xiuzhen (Chinese: 尹秀珍; born 1963 in Beijing) is a Chinese sculpture and installation artist. She incorporates used textiles and keepsakes from her childhood in Beijing to show the connection between memory and cultural identity. She studied oil painting in the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University, then called Beijing Normal Academy, in Beijing from 1985 to 1989. After graduation, Yin taught at the high school attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, until her exhibition schedule became too demanding. Her work has been described by Phyllis Teo as “possessing human warmth, intimacy, and a sense of nostalgia which propels introspection of one’s self—traditions, emotions, and beliefs. Thus, creating of a sense of community and belonging within the audience. Yin Xiuzhen‘s monumental installation “Digestive Cavity”, addressing the notion of containers, is conceived as the focal installation intended to strengthen the physical connection between the entrance of the antiques museum and the public space of the Aurora Building. The installation is meant to create a spatial experience, a private sensorial room that invites visitors to reflect upon life’s transience. The structure for the installation will be built with hundreds of secondhand clothes and Alcantara cuts. The intertwined metal openings organically form a room that depicts a spiritual highway, while the Jingdezhen ceramic vessels embedded in the textile inserts represent fragments of peoples’ lives. “Digestive Cavity” is a part of a series of works, but the use of ceramics marks a new chapter in Yin‘s practice—creating unexpected and foreign objects charged with a disturbing physicality.


Size: 5616px × 3744px
Location: Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate, UK
Photo credit: © John Gaffen 2 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

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