Monday Inspiration ✨
Artist: Hu Xiaoyuan
We save baby teeth, then forget them in drawers. We demolish buildings, then move on. Hu Xiaoyuan collects what we’ve discarded—baby teeth, demolition scraps, silk from silkworms killed for fabric, obsolete household objects—and arranges them into installations that explore family, memory, and time.
This is collage thinking applied to waste instead of magazines. Appropriating overlooked materials. Juxtaposing fragments with different lifespans. Resurrecting what’s been discarded through careful arrangement.
She puts transience and durability in the same frame. Raw silk (made by killing silkworms) wrapped around aerospace aluminium built to last. Baby teeth next to urban demolition scraps. The mayfly—an insect that lives one day—meeting the lilac, a flower that survives harsh winters.
Each material carries its own history, its own trajectory. She excavates what bodies and cities throw away, then transforms it. Not preservation—transformation. Collage as material archaeology.
“The Mayfly Has Untied the Lilac Knot” at Modern Art, London. Hu Xiaoyuan’s first solo show outside Asia.
Text by Max-o-matic
