Ying Xinxun

Ying Xinxun's artistic practice takes everyday life as a point of departure, excavating the "social texture" of materials and objects. Using materials as a creative syntax and technology as a medium, she explores "objects in process" to express contemporary social phenomena. Her recent focus includes the contemporary relationships reflected in themes such as "The Adjustment of Controversies", "new materialism", "globalized collage", and "packaging", investigating the existential states and expressive potential of "objects" and "materiality" in modern society. The language she chose primarily encompasses fiber art and installation, while also extending to video, performance, and painting. Since 2004, she has been engaged in fiber art creation under the guidance of Professor Shi Hui. She received her Ph.D. from the China Academy of Art in 2019. Her accolades include the prestigious "Future Talent Award" – Highest Honor "Talent Prize" from Fondation d’entreprise Martell in 2012 and a nomination for the "Wang Shikuo Award" at Today Art Museum in 2017. In 2012, she was sponsored by Today Art Museum and the Fondation d’entreprise Martell for an artist residency and study program in Düsseldorf. From 2019 to 2020, she undertook a three-month residency at Berlin Art Institute, followed by a one-month residency in Istanbul, in August 2024. As a curator, she organized the fiber art exhibition “0:00” at BANK Gallery in Shanghai in 2018 and co-curated Being Theoria— 4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art in 2022. Currently, she lives and works in Hangzhou, serving as an associate professor and MFA supervisor in the Fiber Art Department at the China Academy of Art.

Recent Solo Exhibitions and Personal Projects: 2024, “OK Not To Be OK” Ying Xinxun Solo Exhibition, 1000 PRESS, Hangzhou, China; 2024, “Post-Eden” GATE27 Residency Personal Project, Istanbul, Turkey; 2024, “Overexposed, Gold Velvet”, Suzhou MoCA The Productivity of Space, Suzhou, China; 2023, “Red Eden”, Bergen, Norway; 2022, “Spectacle Sanatorium” Ying Xinxun Solo Exhibition, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, China; 2019, “Velvet”, (Reference Art Space, Ningbo, China)

The artist’s works have been featured in group exhibitions at institutions including Today Art Museum (Beijing), Times Art Museum (Beijing), Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing), MOCA Shanghai, Zhejiang Art Museum, BANK Gallery (Shanghai), Macao Contemporary Art Center, PIFO GALLERY(Beijing), Xie Zilong Photography Art Museum, Yinchuan Contemporary Art Museum, and China Academy of Art Museum, among others. The works have also been exhibited internationally in Germany, Japan, Norway, Bulgaria, Turkey, and other countries. Including “THE PERFECT PATH Hangzhou, Marco Polo’s ‘City of Heaven’, an exhibition co-organized by the Venice Biennale and China Academy of Art; The 1st and 3rd “Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art”; “Stress Field”, 4th Documentary  Exhibition of Fine Art; “An Alternative Eye—Sights Between Identities and Media” International Contemporary Art Exhibition; “Sub-Phenomena”, the 1st “CAFAM Future” Exhibition Nomination Show.

Public Collections: Istanbul GATE27, Today Art Museum, Fondation d’entreprise Martell, Wang Shikuo Foundation, Powerlong Museum (Shanghai), and other private collections.


OK not to be OK，Velvet, Pearl powder，Nanomolecular matrial，Biotech material，Silk thread、Glass cup、Tulle skirt、Braking device、Metal、Resin，Dimensions variable according to space，2025
OK NOT TO BE OK” —this was a phrase that flickered through Ying Xinxun’s mind. The unintentionally casual tone of the sentence mirrors the everyday objects she chooses in her artistic practice, carrying with them the trivialities and collisions of life, leaving traces before confronting everything that occurs in another form. She likens it to how an oyster transforms the harm inflicted by a grain of sand into something else (a pearl) in its own way, which has led her to an understanding of Eastern philosophy.
Through the narrative prism of "Ali," a fictional Chinese woman born in the 1980s (a typical sample of those who grew up amid the wave of globalization), Ying Xinxun’s series It Matters, Yet It Doesn’t is neither a romanticized ode to mundane objects nor an explicit indictment of women’s plight. Instead, it employs surrealist material alchemy to construct a survival grammar blending Eastern wisdom and contemporary dilemmas: transforming life’s trivialities into something "elegant" and "glittering" through methods of packaging and embellishment. The biological mechanism of pearl formation is reinterpreted as a "reward" for daily labor, the soft texture of velvet is transformed into an "ambiguous" vagueness, and embroidered patterns serve to connect fragments. Yet, when the transformed results, in their superficially glamorous forms, are redefined as "sublime" by another standard..."
“Something happens, something passes; what arrives departs. Turn to the other ‘side,’ and new possibilities emerge. ‘OK NOT TO BE OK’—it all flows.”
Portraits of Everyday Objects，Velvet, embroidery thread, pearl powder, oil paint, wood，Dimensions variable according to space，2025
Image from the artist and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art
Image from the artist and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art
X