Xin Cheng. Image courtesy of Asumi Mizuo.
Xin Cheng's residency is a partnership with The Dowse Art Museum.
Xin Cheng likes to walk, and do stuff around making by hand, ecology, conviviality (and sometimes being nerdy about typography). While living in Hamburg over the past three years, she hosted performative talks and workshops on everyday resourcefulness in Berlin, Sheffield, Mexico City; befriended dancers, film-makers, philosophers, junk traders; wrote stories for Hainamana, made books with Materialverlag and organised a multidisciplinary show on rubber trails. Returning to Tāmaki Makaurau before a virus changed the world, she is happy to continue her making-do(ing) with old and new friends. Her works have been shown in public galleries throughout Aotearoa and at International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno (Czech Republic), Sprint Milano (Italy), Frappant Galerie (Hamburg). She has done residencies in Norway, Taiwan, Cambodia, Switzerland, Korea, Japan. Previously a co-director of the artist-run-space RM, Auckland, she was also the NZ ambassador for the Italian festival Stazione di Topolò 2013-2019. She has an MFA from Hamburg University of Fine Arts (Germany), and studied ecology, psychology, fine arts at the University of Auckland.
Xin Cheng, Seeing Like a Forest. Single-channel HD digital video, colour, sound, 34 min 31 sec, 2019.
In the forthcoming exhibition, From the Ground Up, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland based artist Xin Cheng and collaborator Adam Ben-Dror, based in Lower Hutt, consider the public museum as a site for sharing precious local stories, offering a place to slow down and experience otherwise overlooked gems in one's neighbourhood. To re-channel art-world resources back to the living world. The work seeks to reflect small stories of kinship between humans and the natural world, the possibilities of diverse co-existence and care with our local surroundings, and to reveal sensuous intricacies of 'the multi-species entanglement, complexity, and the shimmer all around us' (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing).
The artists will explore how kindness and care is embodied in the daily interactions at three community initiatives in the Wellington region - Common Unity Aotearoa, Kaicycle and Manawa Karioi - and follow the transformations occurring there: composting, growing, foraging/harvesting and enjoyment by myriad creatures.
Xin Cheng, Seeing Like a Forest. Single-channel HD digital video, colour, sound, 34 min 31 sec, 2019.
Xin Cheng's and Adam Ben-Dror's exhibition is supported by Creative New Zealand.
