25 Facts About Yin Xiuzhen

Yin Xiuzhen is a Chinese sculpture and installation artist.

Yin Xiuzhen incorporates used textiles and keepsakes from her childhood in Beijing to show the connection between memory and cultural identity.

Yin Xiuzhen has employed pots and pans, wooden chests, suitcases and cement in her work.

Yin Xiuzhen studied oil painting in the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University, then called Beijing Normal Academy, in Beijing from 1985 to 1989.

Yin Xiuzhen's art has been greatly influenced by her impoverished upbringing during the time of the Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement from 1966 to 1976.

Yin Xiuzhen has stated the '85 Art New Wave Movement going on in China at the time along with a 1985 Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at the National Art Museum as turning her towards more contemporary styles and influencing her use of different mediums for her art.

Yin Xiuzhen's Suitcase, 1995 was an installation created in a time that women in China were producing works that conveyed their frustrations and emotional distress in times of immense political pressure after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Yin Xiuzhen is well known for Portable City, a series of sculptures created from clothing collected in different cities shaped into building-like forms and arranged inside suitcases.

Yin Xiuzhen had made over 40 Portable City suitcases for various cities around the world to express her perceptions about the many places she's visited in this era of globalization.

In Fashion Terrorism, Yin Xiuzhen used clothing to construct weapons and other objects forbidden on a plane, then packed them up in a suitcase.

Yin Xiuzhen's works explored the issues brought by globalization and homogenization.

Yin Xiuzhen began working during a time when little attention was paid to environmental degradation in China, and her signature materials are used clothing, cement, and discarded building materials.

For example, in one piece entitled Ruined City constructed at the Capital Normal University in 1996, Yin Xiuzhen took 1,400 grey roof tiles, rubble, and objects directly from the site of a demolished building in Beijing and she used personal possessions such as a set of four wooden chairs from her marriage with Song Dong; transformed it into an installation piece that commemorated the essence of a city that was lost in the process of modernization.

Yin Xiuzhen's work is notable for its early engagement with environmental concerns.

In 1995, as part of a public art event called "Keepers of the Waters" in Chengdu organized by American ecofeminist artist Betsy Damon, Yin Xiuzhen created Washing the River, a performance piece involving ten cubic meters of frozen river water that she invited the public to wash until they melted away.

Yin Xiuzhen's works convey tensions other Chinese people were facing in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.

Yin Xiuzhen has staged the river washing artwork in multiple locations around the world, including Australia and Germany, stating that the performance piece is relevant at each location it is performed at since environmental concerns are a global issue.

Yin Xiuzhen has participated in group exhibitions such as Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Guggenheim Museum, and China 8, an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art in eight cities and nine museums in the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany, the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, the 4th Yokohama Triennale, the 7th Shanghai Biennale, the 52nd Venice Biennale, the 14th Biennale of Sydney and the 26th Sao Paulo Art Biennial.

Yin Xiuzhen's work has been the subject of solo presentation at the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Yin Xiuzhen is married to fellow artist Song Dong and currently lives and works in Beijing.

Yin Xiuzhen was inspired by her life living in Beijing's Second Cotton Factory and her mom's work in the garment factory.

Yin Xiuzhen then filled it with cement and added a plaque of explanation to the interior of the case's cover.

Yin Xiuzhen had directed her approach to creating rather than being muted.

Yin Xiuzhen's largest work in perspective, titled Trojan, is a large scale installation part of her series, provides a spiritual sanctuary for the individual in turmoil.

Yin Xiuzhen appears not to attach any meaning to the work, although in contrast with her bright colors of her other works, the monochromatic tones of the work attempts to find consolation, becoming the representation of solitude, repression and anxiety in modern life.