In her series of inquiries on the genetic myth of personhood, community and coded bodies. Xin Liu visualizes her sequenced genetic code by assigning colors to the letters, AaCcGgTt. The digital sculpture in this exhibition is both a flower and a root system, signifying fertility in a hostile environment, the desert, where she grew up. It shares forms and thematic resonance with When we were flowers, a collaboration with local Uygur artisans in Hotan, Xinjiang, in which carpets were created using the Senna knot weaving method, with the color-coded background of the artist’s genetic sequence and the traditional pattern of pomegranate flowers in its foreground.

Artist Bio

Xin Liu is an artist and engineer. She creates experiences to take measurements in our personal, social, and technological spaces in a post-metaphysical world. Her work resides in between the measurable and ineffable, seeking tensions and reconciliations at macro- and micro-scales that are beyond our daily experiences. With a focus on embodied storytelling, she explores her ideas through different materials and mediums. Since 2017, she has created a series of experimental performances in zero gravity. Her inquiries on gravity led to Living Distance, an outer space performance of a wisdom tooth, questioning mortality, mutation, and our desire for exploration, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. In 2021, her first institutional solo exhibition in Aranya Art Center presented seven projects ranging from dance performances, sculpture, installation, and films, centering around the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism.

Xin is the Arts Curator in the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab and also an artist-in-residence at SETI Institute. She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Porches Chinese Young Artist of the Year 2021, 30 under 30 Asia, X Museum Triennial Award, the Van Lier Fellowship from the Museum of Arts and Design, and Sundance New Frontier Story Lab.