Sponge, nylon stockings, stainless vehicle exhaust, clothes worn by different people
Yin Xiuzhen Filter series: View 001, 2014 Sponge, nylon stockings, stainless vehicle exhaust, clothes worn by different people 195 x 50 x 43 cm © Yin Xiuzhen Courtesy of Pace Beijing Yin Xiuzhen’s work investigates politics of the personal and domestic, manifesting sensitivity that often belies her subject matter. She is an artist for whom the everyday critically informs investigated subject matter. Her deeply humanist perspective is contextualised in an apprehension of very broad social and political issues that, while being particularised within the Chinese contemporary experience, are universal. Yin Xiuzhen often re-uses old clothes to construct works that quietly and humorously investigate modernist abstract practice, within the socio/political frame of her particular interest: the plight of the individual within Chinese social organisation. The works comment on the conformity necessary when living in an over-crowded social network, where social interaction is inevitable and (necessarily) controlled. From a distance, the works appear to be large abstractions; cool expressions of a modernist practice. In close proximity they evoke intense human dynamics and interaction, through the very act of breathing. Some of her most famous works, the Portable City series - cloth constructions in suitcases - are highly personal apprehensions of major metropolises. Here, the artist makes models of places she is interested in. These are replete with skyscrapers, bridges, roads, street sounds, music and lights, forming whimsical and idiosyncratic portraits of place. The Melbourne suitcase is based on Yin Xiuzhen’s experience of living in the city for three months and added to after a further visit, and her love of its sophisticated charms. This suitcase includes the concert hall, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Eureka Tower and Federation Square as well as Flinders Street Station and the city skyline - a full portrait of the city centre. Yin Xiuzhen was born in 1963, Beijing, where she is based. She graduated from Capital Normal University in Beijing 1989. She has held solo exhibition at Yinat Groninger Museum, the Netherlands, 2012; Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2008; The Moritzhof of Chemnitz and Gallery Weltecho Chemnitz, Germany, 2008; REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2006; ISE Foundation, New York, 2003; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2000; Capital Normal University Museum, Beijing, 1996; and Beijing Contemporary Art Museum, Beijing, 1995. In 2007, her work was featured in the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Her work was included in the 2004 Sao Paulo Biennale; the 2004 Sydney Biennale; and the 2002 Gwangju Biennale.