Grandma’s Pride on Drying Rack 2021 oil and embroidery on silk
38 x 38 inches     I am currently working on a new series of silk pieces. It is a series of mixed media paintings, using oil painting and embroideries as main tools to create unconventional juxtapositions of scenes and figures to form non-linear narratives. With the attempt to articulate my thinking in narratives, I create a systematic visual language to speak out about thematic stories, in animation, painting and drawing. My narrative moves from playful moving creatures, to realistic figure portraitures, to mythological abstraction, and now to cultural iconography, aiming to create intimate panorama of society, identity, memory and utopia in layers of impressions.    The materiality of canvas is equally vital to my artistic language. Coming out of my investment in the subject, I choose to work with silk, considering it to be translucent, soft, fragile, reminiscent of satin sheet or women’s intimate lingerie- in this case, my grandmother’s underwear. It all starts with the day I saw my grandma’s underwears on a bamboo drying rack outside. Her wrinkled, wet underwears flew in the wind, as they were bellowing out my shame. By layering and juxtaposing fabrics, my work explores the tension of the real and unreal, the unfamiliar and the established, the embodiment and self-representation.     Xinyi Hu (b.1995) is a Chinese female artist, who is currently living and working in Philadelphia. She has developed a body of work in analog photography, drawing, oil painting and video, to search for reaffirmation and reassurance of her identity as being both modern and Chinese in the new era.