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“For A Bigger Picture ”

/ Yin Xiuzhen

Yin Xiuzhen
She was born in Beijing in 1963. She graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University in 1989 and now lives and works in Beijing. Yin Xiuzhen started her contemporary art practice in early 1990s. Her works are experimental and diverse. She takes the experiences, memories and impressions of different people and the imprints of cultures and the times as her key creative elements and uses materials that feature introspection and experimentation that showcase a broad expression of creative and artistic forms. Her work involves installation, performance, porcelain, photograph, video, painting, sculpture and many others.

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Yin Xiuzhen is famous for her works of art using used goods, which explore the modern problems of globalization and homogenization. By making recycled materials into memorable sculpture documents, she tries to personalize items and allude to the lives of specific individuals, which are often ignored by the driving forces of excessive urbanization, rapid modern development and global economic growth.

Yin Xiuzhen once said: “In China with instantaneous changes, ‘memory’ seems to disappear faster than everything else. That’s why preserving memory has become another way of life.” She uses memory as a key tool to study the political, social and environmental structure around her.

The common themes of Yin Xiuzhen's works include memory, past and present, and the complex relationship between individuals and the changing society. She can weave the past experience with the present via the collection and combination of used materials in a new context. It also implies the transience of memory and its gradual dilution into history.

Now Yin Xiuzhen has effectively burned part of porcelain by incorporating daily necessities such as razors, rulers and knives into the making process, forming a black outline of the object itself, which further promotes a visual expression of use and loss. She weaves the past experience with the present via the collection and combination of used materials in a new context. In this way, she has embraced the concepts of memory and experience and tried to convey the relationship between all aspects of personal life and global change.

Yin’s work is invested in exploring cultural memory and the scale of change that occurred in China in the late twentieth century, particularly in how a more international economy and new attitudes toward urbanism have created environments where traditions and objects are treated as ephemeral or disposable.

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Yin Xiuzhen has become a female artist with broad international influence and has participated in many important international art exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and its Chinese Pavilion; the Sao Paulo Biennale; the Biennale of Sydney; the Shanghai Biennale; the Gwangju Biennale, the Yokohama Triennale, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, among others. She has also held solo exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, and the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, in Germany. Her works have been collected by Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Groninger Museum, Mori Art Museum, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Art Gallery of New South Wales, M+ and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, among other foundations and institutions.

Her solo exhibition :2021,Yin Xiuzhen: Along the Way,Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, New York, May 21–June 26, 2021; YinXiuzhen: Sky Patch, Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile, Hong Kong,October 31, 2020–November 4, 2021; Unknown | Yin Xiuzhen, Zhi Art Museum,Chengdu, China, September 20, 2020–October 31, 2021; Online: YinXiuzhen, Pace Gallery, June 16–30, 2020; Made in China 007: Action andReflection: Yin Xiuzhen, Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, September29–December 30, 2018; Yin Xiuzhen: Back to the End, Pace Beijing,December 14, 2017–March 3, 2018; Yin Xiuzhen, Pace Hong Kong, 15CEntertainment Building, 30 Queen's Road Central, November 24, 2016–January 12,2017; Yin Xiuzhen: Slow Release, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art,Moscow, 2016;Yin Xiuzhen: Washing River, Tasmania Museum and ArtGallery, Hobart, Australia, 2014; Yin Xiuzhen: Nowhere to Land, PaceBeijing, 2013; Yin Xiuzhen, Groninger Museum, The Netherlands, June16–November 18, 2012. Traveled to: Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany, December 15,2012 –February 17, 2013. (Catalogue);Yin Xiuzhen: One Sentence,Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin, 2011; Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen, TheMuseum of Modern Art, New York, 2010; Yin Xiuzhen: China in Four Seasons, Govett-BrewsterArt Gallery, New Zealand, 2010; Yin Xiuzhen: Second Skin, PaceBeijing, March 18–May 8, 2010; Yin Xiuzhen, Anna Schwartz Gallery,Sydney, February 14–March 26, 2009. (Catalogue)2008; Yin Xiuzhen: Commune, TheMoritzhof of Chemnitz and Gallery, Weltecho Chemnitz, Germany, 2008; YinXiuzhen: Introspective Cavity, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing,2008; Yin Xiuzhen in Beijing Commune, Beijing Commune, 2007. (Catalogue);Yin Xiuzhen: International Airport Terminal 1, Alexander Ochs Gallery,Berlin, 2006. (Catalogue); Yin Xiuzhen: Restroom W, Gallery at Redcat,Los Angeles, 2006; Yin Xiuzhen: Fashion Terrorism, Town Hall, Friedrichshafen, Germany, 2004; Yin Xiuzhen: Clothes Airplane—Made inSiemens, Siemens Art Project, Beijing, 2001; Yin Xiuzhen: Suitcases:Installation Objects Photography, Alexander Ochs Gallery, Berlin, 2001; Yin Xiuzhen: Building Materials, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne,2000. (Catalogue); Yin Xiuzhen – Yi Nian Bu Zai Jia ein Jahr nicht zu Hause, KünstlerhausSchloss Balmoral, Bad Ems, Germany, January 15–May 12, 1999. (Catalogue); YinXiuzhen: Brain, Manchester Craft Centre, United Kingdom, 1998; YinXiuzhen: Dining Table, Ruine for Arts, Berlin, 1997; Yin Xiuzhen: DryingClothes, Shuang Lian Ting, Hua Yan Li, Beijing, 1997; Yin Xiuzhen:Ruined City, Capital Normal University Museum, Beijing, 1996; YinXiuzhen: Exhibition of Installations, Beijing Contemporary Art Museum,1995.