“Sky Patch,” a new installation by artist Yin Xiuzhen, comprises a patchwork of torn and tattered clothes belonging to about 1,000 people, and gives the impression of a stained-glass ceiling that’s being pierced by a 15-meter-tall pin. The piece was inspired by Nüwa, a goddess in Chinese mythology who is credited with creating humanity and repairing the pillars of heaven with five colored stones.

The installation is part of the 61-year-old artist’s latest solo exhibition, Piercing the Sky, which opened this month at the Power Station of Art, a contemporary art museum in central Shanghai. “I think people should break through their shackles,” Yin says. “In a sense, the clothes in ‘Sky Patch’ are patching up the sky, but they also act as a kind of shackle, and we need to pierce through them.”

Born in Beijing, Yin began making art after graduating from Capital Normal University’s Fine Arts Department in 1989. She is known for creations that fuse hard and soft materials, with previous works including secondhand clothes, shoes, and suitcases alongside steel, concrete, glass, and porcelain.

As her mother worked at a state-owned cotton mill, Yin feels she has an affinity with textiles. When she was a child, almost all her clothes were hand-me-downs from her elder sister, and her mother would patch up any items that were torn. She has long seen clothes as a person’s “second skin,” bearing their memories and life experiences.

In the family home, when clothes could no longer be worn, they would be cut up and used as shoe soles. In 1998, Yin printed 10 photos of herself from childhood to adulthood, cropped them, and placed them inside 10 pairs of black cloth shoes made by her mother and herself. This forms the artwork “Shoes (set of 10).”

Another of Yin’s pieces, “Dress Box,” from 1995, saw the artist seal clothes she had worn for 30 years in concrete inside a suitcase made by her father. Luggage also became a key feature of her “Portable City” series, in which she used secondhand clothes to construct city skylines in textiles within the confines of a suitcase, reflecting on vast urbanization and unstable globalization. The first piece in the series, a reproduction of Beijing, was completed in 2001, and Yin has since made at least 40 more.

Her 2007 work “Collective Subconscious” was more interactive, with visitors invited to walk through a 10-meter-long, bisected coach connected by suitcase trolley wheels and used clothing. All the while, the Wang Feng pop song “Beijing, Beijing” was pumped through speakers.

Yin began incorporating porcelain into her art in 2015. In addition to creating experimental vessels and instruments, she also mixed textiles and porcelain. In a recent piece, “Life Fiber Fragments,” she kneaded together clay and textiles before firing them in a kiln. “In the end, the clothes disappeared, but the porcelain that remained looked real and had texture,” Yin says. “I used to say that clothes represent people’s experience and time, but the clothes just vanished suddenly, leaving an empty shell. Where did the person go?”

After more than 30 years of exploring the outside world, Yin began looking inward. This year, she invited four generations of her family to take part in the project “Exit,” which features repurposed exit signs alongside videos of young and elderly relatives walking on a treadmill placed in an entranceway. The work includes Yin’s father, who is in his 90s and has Alzheimer’s disease.

“The whole family was happy together,” Yin says, “(My father) said he had a great day, and I felt really touched. I think this reflects the charm of art... I think we all need to find an exit in our lives.”

Editor: Hao Qibao. 

(Header image: “Sky Patch” and “Piercing the Sky” on display in Shanghai, November 2024. Ding Yining/Sixth Tone)