xinyu xuxx ︎ ︎
Xinyu XuXX - they/she
(b.1998 Huangshan, China), based in London, UK
received an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, a graduate diploma in Fine Art from Royal College of Art and a BA in fashion design from China Academy of Art.
Xinyu is an experimental filmmaker, mixed-media artist, and occasional screening organizer. They see the image as a phantom limb—one that inhabits multiple times and spaces, forming a "second skin" that blurs the boundaries between presence and absence. Rooted in the poetics of memory, spectrality, and the fragmented nature of perception, their work explores the interweaving of non-linear narratives, feminist world-making, queer spatialities, diasporic displacement, and haunted archives.
Drawing from found footage, material decay, and embodied storytelling, Xinyu’s practice engages with the liminality of images, investigating how cinema can function as a site of both remembrance and reinvention. Their work has been showcased at the London Short Film Festival (ICA, London), Goldsmiths CCA (London), Studio dB (Berlin), The Living Gallery (New York), The Art Pavilion (London), and Three Shadows Gallery (Beijing), among others.
Contact:
Email: xinyuxuiris@gmail.com
Instagram: @xinyuiris
Artist studio programme:
2023-2025 Conditions Studio Programme, London, UK
Education:
2021- 2023 MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Jan-July 2021 Graduate diploma, Fine Art, Royal College of Art, UK
2016-2020 BA fashion design, China Academy of Art, China
Prizes & Awards:
2024 DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice) funding Round 19 Funded applicant
London Short Film Festival (LSFF), Official Selection, artists’ film
Selected Group Exhibition & Screening:
2024 CRAFTING FUTURES, organised by Squish at The Grey Space, Hague, Netherlands
CIRCLE, CICA Museum, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
Conditions Screening, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Cinema 2, London, UK
GENERIC CORPORATE EVENT curated by Kawaii Agency, London,UK
Shedding:::selves, part of Queer East Festival, Ugly Duck, London, UK
PHONY, Lock In Gallery, Brighton, UK
INVISIBLE VISIBLE, hARTslane Gallery, London, UK
WELCOME TO UK, Ugly Duck, London, UK
INTERRUPT as part of Queer Fest Norwich, UK
London Short Film Festival LSFF, Institute of Contemporary Art(ICA), Cinema 1, London,UK
2023 Videoclub Ed.16 screening, Studio,dB, Berlin, Germany
Extrapool Weekend, as part of Video Club collective, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art Degree Show
Videoclub Ed.12 screening, Sameheads, Berlin, Germany; The Living Gallery, New York, US
Quote unquote, Ugly Duck, Bermondsey, London, UK
2022 Omitted References, The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park, London,UK
Riposte London (queer art Pride), Electrowerkz, London, UK
Our Body Are Portal, Asylum Chapel, London,UK
At the edge of safe house, Safe House, Peckham, London,UK
Futures After, Peacock, Catford, London,UK
2021 White City constructing for the uninhabited, Hoxton253, London, UK
The Law of Alchemy - Three Shadows photography art centre, Beijing, China
Double Interval - Huangshan city, China
Curatorial project:
20/04/2024 - Queer East Artists’ Moving Image programme as guest curator, IMAGE UNDER THE GROUND at Ugly Duck, London, UK
03/10/2023 - Screening If Splash as Your Whistle vol.2 at IKLECTIK, as organiser, London, UK
27/05/2023 - Screening If Splash as Your Whistle vol.1 Goldsmiths Contemporary Art Centre CCA residency space as the organiser and one of artists, London, UK
23/07-22/08/2021 Group show Double Interval as curator & artist, Huangshan city, China
Publication&Review:
2024 Work featured in “Building community through creativity, Queer East Film Festival comes of age” written by Cici Peng, published on Little White Lies
2024 Work featured in“Daydream House” written by Cindy Ziyun Huang for London Short Film Festival. Published on LSFF official website,
2023 Work featured in “Splashes of Queerness: Memories and Resistance in an Artist Screening” written by Ernesto Hernan, published on Only Child Mag.
2022 Work featured in The Land From Which We Come, edited by Alice Oliver - Sola Journal
Video installation
1’00’’
click pic to watch the video
︎Monkey Catching the Moon is an old Chinese fable: a group of monkeys wants to catch the moon and think that the moon's reflection on the water is the real moon, so they try their best to catch it but are only in vain. As I grew up, anything about the period could not be seen but be laughed at or even insulted. A sense of period shame that has been with many girls, including me, for many years.
The image of the period in today's patriarchal society is like the reflection of the moon on the water in the Monkey Catching the Moon. It does exist but only like to avoid. All the struggle for it is likely to become futile, but the spirit of catching the moon should continue. Simultaneously, the gesture to wipe period and the gesture to catch the moon reaches a consensus and connection, such as a kind of revolutionary call.
So I would like to be the monkey in the story, using the results produced by the moon-catching gesture and wiping-period gesture to do integrated performance under the projection, to form a reflection of the period in today's society: existing but equivalent to nothing.︎
B&W video with sound
3’12’’
Negative Capability : I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
—The first mention of negative capability in a letter to brothers George Keats and Thomas Keats on December 8, 1817
Inspired by the unconscious rambling experience of myself at night in Shanghai,2020. A human activity filled with uncertainties, darkness, mysteries, and doubts that turns introspection into outdoor activity, in which the mind, while the body operates only daily takes a grand adventure to put aside all knowledge that it knew. Such activity is designed to free one from the bonds and constraints of a human's identity. By gradually abandoning the likes and dislikes and the individuality, the one is degenerating into "nothing" and is slowly accepting "everything," reaching the balance of the non-subject object relationship between the environment and people. I found that the water in the environment has the same properties as the person in the drifting. I use water to turn the actions of one person into countless, into a group of people walking.
CLICK ABOVE PIC TO WATCH THE VIDEO
