Sixing Xu

Statement

Sixing Xu makes works that exist as sculpture-text duos, interweaved with printmaking elements. Intrigued by the infra-ordinary, Xu attempts to dig out the possible relationships between individual subjects and their situated reality. She takes banal and peripheral indicators in life and treats them as complex and open sites for nuanced narratives, often incorporating a set of 9 characters. In entangling the temporal nature of a written story and the spatiality of objects, these narratives look for uncharted paths, or systems of knowing, to ponder our lived experiences in relation to a world sometimes fixated by the default historical, ideological, and linguistic axes and storylines.

GlogauAIR Project

My current project “Materials (Footage)” begins with a chance encounter of two Super 8mm reels: one records my last pre-COVID trip in Berlin, the other, sent to me by mistake, a travelogue from a stranger, shot in my hometown Beijing. Despite their different contents, the two films are similarly propelled by the desire to document movements, which is embedded in the medium of film itself. While for the past few years, this desire has been suspended, along with the notions of freedom, global fluidity and connectedness, I became interested in suspending this suspension, in order to re-consider geographical movement in relation to one’s (in)ability to move within or from certain historical and political narratives.

The standardized film format provides me with a pair of “found footage.” By juxtaposing the films’ 3500+ frames, I write after selected pairs of scenes to create another story set in the framework of an adventure story – a genre revolving around the protagonists’ movements and desire to seek (If “movement” is the answer, what is the riddle?). The project will culminate in an installation consisting of sculptures, writings, and drypoint prints.

Writing, Installation, Printmaking, and Sculpture

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• 2018 B.A. in Media Studies, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

EXHIBITIONS

• 2023 Solo Exhibition, Hüten Gallery, Shanghai (upcoming)
• 2023 Mother Mold, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY
• 2022 Witches Own Without (W.O.W), Current Plans, Hong Kong
• 2021 The Dwelling Place of the Other in Me, Power Station of Art, Shanghai Chiri Photography Festival, Enjoy Art Museum, Beijing
• 2021 Absence and Presence, Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Shanghai
• 2021 Painful Pain, Hüten Gallery, Shanghai
• 2021 Indoor Waste Land, HEREON, Shanghai
• 2021 Tabula Rasa Tablet, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing/Online
• 2021 From Checkers to Complex System, Times Art Museum, Chengdu
• 2020 05181046324143141713 (a game), 25 East Gallery, New York, NY
• 2019 Between Here and There, 25 East Gallery, New York, NY
• 2018 Unofficial Preview, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
• 2018 Electric Woman, Online
• 2017 Uncertainty, Gallery No One, Chicago/Online
• 2017 Goodbye to All That, Front Door Ghost, Brooklyn, NY
• 2017 Studio Art Spring Show, James W. Palmer Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY

PRESS

• 2021 “Feminism in China Is Not an Imported Good,” T Magazine China
• 2021 “An Earnest but As Yet Indefinite Speech,” Power Station of Art
• 2021 “Currently On View at HEREON: Indoor Wasteland,” LITCHI International
• 2021 “Sixing Xu: Making Enigmas”, Interview with TightBelt
• 2021 “Artist Questionnaire: Sixing Xu”, Interview with Hüten Gallery
• 2021 “Spotlighting Works by 33 Artists from China and Abroad, Exhibition
• 2021 “From Checkers to Complex System” Opens,” Sohu
• 2017 “About Uncertainty,” Review by Laura Xue, gallery no one 2016-2017 Annual Catalogue

WRITINGS & PUBLICATIONS

• 2022 “The Rest is Yet to Be History”, Spike Art Magazine
• 2022 “Long Live Life and Death,” Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art
• 2021 “Move, Or Not: Pararailing”, LEAP 艺术界
• 2021 “Eva Zhang: Needles are My Brushes,” Tabula Rasa Gallery
• 2021 Tabula Rasa Tablet Curatorial Text, Tabula Rasa Gallery
• 2020 “CSSD”, Sine Theta Magazine, Issue 16 Vertex

CURATORIAL & COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS

• 2022 Railing Codex Online writing project Co-organized with Jie Shao and Xuecan Ye (as Pararailing)
• 2021 Tabula Rasa Tablet Online Exhibition, Organized with Viola Wanying Liu Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing
• 2020 栏杆外 Pararailing Co-Founder, Shanghai
• 2020 05181046324143141713 (a game) Organized with Karen Dias 25 East Gallery, New York, NY
• 2016 Here and Elsewhere: Perspectives on the Syrian Refugee Crisis Ford Scholars Program, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
• 2015 A(n Underground) Tale of Two Cities Creative Arts Across Disciplines, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

TALKS & ONLINE PROGRAMS

• 2022 Cacotopia Special–Stay at Home:340m/s, Macalline Art Center
• 2021 Emerging “Institutions” Springtime Tea Party, online, organized by TightBelt
• 2020 Ways of Seeing: Sine Theta Magazine Reading

RESIDENCIES & PROGRAMS

• 2023 NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY
• 2020 Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, Online
• 2019 Field School Berlin, Feldfunf, Berlin

AWARDS & HONORS

• 2020 Nominee, International Sculpture Center Student Award, Hamilton, NJ
• 2019 Graduate Student Research Fund, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
• 2019 Provost’s Scholarship, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY
• 2018 The Weitzel-Barber Art Travel Prize, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
• 2018 Academic Enrichment Fund, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

Gallery