The first major UK survey of work by leading Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, Heart to Heart invites visitors to step into her spellbinding world. Spanning the entire lower-level galleries, the exhibition brings together seminal projects from the past three decades, alongside new commissions and historic works reimagined for the space. Through large-scale installations made from everyday objects, industrial materials and used items of clothing, Heart to Heart invites us to see the familiar in new ways, revealing the personal and collective stories these overlooked items carry.
Yin is a pioneering artist of her generation who first emerged on the contemporary Chinese art scene in the early 1990s. Like many of her contemporaries, her career developed at the same time as major cultural, economic and social changes in China. Observing the country’s fast economic growth, urbanisation and global integration, Yin was keen to explore how living in an increasingly connected world can impact identity. She began working with mundane materials - including cement, ceramics, glass, clay, food and household objects - to uncover the traces of memory, personal history and time embedded within them.
Heart to Heart comprehensively presents Yin’s artistic journey across installation, sculpture, photography, video, wall-based works and archival materials of her early performances. The exhibition takes its name from a new commission: a huge, immersive textile installation shaped like a human heart. Inviting visitors to step inside, the work will be built from used clothing items collected from a wide array of people, signifying the gathering of our shared memories to create a space for reflection on how our individual and collective experiences intertwine.
Yin Xiuzhen says: "The heart is our human engine and, in my culture, it transcends the mind. ‘Heart-to-heart’ is a way to connect and I am delighted to have this chance to engage in a heart-to-heart dialogue with visitors of the Hayward Gallery, drawing on my thirty-plus years of practice; this exhibition is an opportunity for mutual exchange, one I hope will generate sparks." A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, including a newly commissioned essay by curator and writer Lydia Yee alongside a conversation between Yin and exhibition curator Yung Ma, available to buy in store and online at the Hayward Gallery shop.
Yin Xiuzhen Heart to Heart was realised with generous support provided by the Huo Family Foundation. We are also grateful for key support from Beijing Commune, Eleanor and Francis Shen, and Max and Monique Burger and the TOY family.
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