This is a fun and funny exhibition. I’ve read some critics being snooty about it but on the day I went there were quite a few families with toddlers running in and out of the room-sized heart, marvelling at the models of cities in suitcases, pointing at the fabric bookshelves, climbing into the concertina minibus and generally enjoying themselves.
Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
Yin Xiuzhen
Yin Xiuzhen was born in Beijing, China in 1963. This means she grew up during the Cultural Revolution which lasted from 1966 to 1976, with its high ideals and practical chaos. You wouldn’t really have known this from her work which, far from declaiming high political ideals, is the opposite: it feels highly personal, sweet, domestic and above all, fun.
In particular Yin is known for her inventive use of worn clothing as a material, thinking of clothes as a kind of ‘second skin’ which retain ghostly memories of all their wearers. The curators tell us that Yin’s mother worked in a clothing factory and as a result Yin developed an intimate and industrial relationship with textiles.
‘I feel that clothes are like a second skin; they have their own expressive language, and are connected with their times and therefore with history.’
Hence variations on the theme or method of stitched-together fabrics, from the small-scale – sealing her own clothes in cement – to the massive – building a huge model jet airliner from old clothes and, even more striking, a room-sized heart made from discarded clothes dyed red and paintstakingly stitched together. And what do people carry their clothes around in? Suitcases. Hence the unexpected recurrence of suitcases, trunks and boxes throughout the show.
The exhibition starts in the present, with her biggest, funnest works including some made specially for this exhibition, and then moves back in time, becoming a bit more earnest and serious.
International Flight and Portable Cities
The biggest and most recent work fills the very first gallery. This is a mock-up of an airport luggage carousel. It appears to emerge from one wall of the gallery, curve round the central space before exiting through another wall. Looking closely you can see that the black plastic of the carousel is itself made of stitched fabric but the obvious thing is that this carousel is carrying models of major world cities, made out of fabric and made to a scale which fits neatly into an open suitcase.
The fabric model of an airport conveyor belt carrying portable cities in by Yin Xiuzhen (2026) in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
This is a great fun idea, it’s fun to inspect each city model looking for landmarks of the ones you know. They are New York (of course), Hamburg, Melbourne, Seoul, Dunhuang, Brussels, Shenzhen, and Yin has added a new model, of London, specially for this exhibition.
A fabric model of London by Yin Xiuzhen (2026) in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
Looming over the whole thing is a huge model of a jet airliner except that, instead of being made of sleek dominating metal, it is constructed from her trademark second-hand clothes and fabrics. This obviously softens its whole presence, making the entire space feel warm and humorous.
A fabric model of airliner by Yin Xiuzhen (2026) in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
There is a more serious side if you like seriousness. You could take a work like this as a reference to globalisation and the constant movement of people and goods around the world, to the fundamental fact that during her lifetime China transformed itself into the factory of the world, a major hub of global production and export.
And the cities made of fabric point towards the idea that cities are, in the end, made from the people that live in them, the soft bodies and their warm clothes, their activities and relationships and memories, rather than the huge buildings of concrete and steel which have shot up all around us. An impression emphasised when we learn that Yin made these cities out of clothes collected from each city’s inhabitants.
Heart to Heart (2025)
Up the ramp to the second gallery space where you encounter one of the show’s showcase exhibits, a model of a heart made from a metal frame on which have been stretched a huge patchwork of fabrics in a range of red and red-related colours. And crucially, not only can you walk around and admire its size and presence (reflected in the wall of mirrors next to it) but you can go inside where you find bean bags to sprawl on and fun portholes to look out of.
‘Heart to Heart’ by Yin Xiuzhen @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
According to Yin, Heart to Heart is grounded in the Chinese philosophy of xin meaning ‘heart-mind’, where thought and feeling are inseparable. I laughed when I read the wall label saying:
‘I invite people to enter and come into direct contact with the heart itself, inviting deep and meaningful conversations.’
For a start, this is London and these are the English, who travel the Tube in their millions every morning in total silence. Talking to strangers is a sacking offence. I did try to strike up a conversation with a middle-aged woman in the heart but she made the shortest possible reply and hurriedly moved away. So much for inviting ‘deep and meaningful conversation’.
I circled round past it three or four times and every time there were toddlers running in and out, peering out the porthole, enjoying themselves. Children’s laughter better than deep and meaningful conversations, anytime.
Bookcases
Sharing this gallery are half a dozen bookcases stuffed with books which – you might have guessed by now – are made of fabric. On closer examination you realise these are themed, with a red bookcase, a blue bookcase, and a sort of tartan one.
Fabric bookshelves by Yin Xiuzhen in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
These are funny and striking in their own right but, if you accept the premise of fabrics as bearing the ghostly imprint of their wearers, then they suggest the kind of secondary meanings which books possess – containing not only the words of their authors, but also, in some imaginary space, all the responses of their countless readers, all the emotions and insights and feelings they’ve ever prompted.
Collective Subconscious (Blue)
You go downstairs into the third big gallery of the show and this is dominated by another big striking installation. This is a beaten up old minivan which Yin has extended to five times its normal length using her metal frame and fabric technique.
‘Collective Subconscious’ by Yin Xiuzhen in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
These minibuses were known as a xiao mian or ‘little loaf of bread’. Yin recalls that in the 1990s owning one meant ‘you had a happy life that everyone would covet.’
But the first and overwhelming impact is funny and, as with the big heart, you are encouraged to climb inside and crawl along its length and exit at the back door. Or maybe stay for a deep and meaningful conversation.
The wall label tells us that Yin used over four hundred pieces of clothing she collected herself, the idea being, as with the plane and the heart, that by gathering the experiences of different individuals into one work through their clothes, she created a kind of collective subconscious, ghostly memories hovering around the everyday metal object.
From a speaker somewhere inside the caterpillared van is playing a very mellow, soul-style song, which turns out to be Beijing Beijing by Chinese pop star Wang Feng. Remember we’re looking into a deeply foreign culture here. Yin tells us that when Beijingers see the minibus and hear the song, they will remember that certain period of idealism in the nineties and think about where they see themselves now. Maybe a little like our Britpop and excitement about the New Labour government, then.
It’s ironic that she’s chosen this song as part of her plaint for the loss of traditional Chinese spaces and cultures, given that it is a complete copy of Western adult-oriented rock at its blandest. Still surprisingly effecting, isn’t it?
This rather sad nostalgia for many of the old buildings and spaces Chinese cities lost during their extraordinary spurt of growth in the 1990s and 2000s is the theme of this gallery. In chronological order:
Dress Box (1995)
Remember what I’ve said about clothes and trunks? ‘Dress Box’ consists of a wooden trunk which has been filled with a careful arrangement of clothes and cement. It’s accompanied by a 21-minute video.
‘Dress Box’ by Yin Xiuzhen in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
The themes are time and memory. The idea is that these are clothes Yin wore 30 years previously, bearing the ghost imprint of her back then, her experiences and memories.
Referencing her mother again, Yin tells us that she and her mother sewed together the seams of clothes from her childhood to adulthood. She stacked a selection of them into a dress box made by my father, before sealing them in concrete.
Why concrete? Well, concrete is (obviously enough) the basic material for modern buildings, the key component of Chinese cities’ extraordinary growth. But in a metaphorical way, Yin’s clothes are her building materials, the clothes – and family action and work – which built her.
Concrete is hard and cold but the clothes are soft and evoke ideas of warmth and closeness.
And, at a pinch, although this isn’t stated anywhere in the labels, concrete is masculine – representing the hard, commercial, technological future – while the clothes are feminine – representing the soft, intimate, family-based past.
Ruined city (1996)
In the other corner of this room is Ruined City. This is an installation of tiles, some random furniture and, most strikingly, dark grey cement powder stacked in cones.
‘Ruined City’ by Yin Xiuzhen in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
To quote Yin:
Day by day, I watched Beijing’s collective memory be dismantled and I felt a profound sense of loss. Everywhere you looked you saw the character chai (meaning ‘to be demolished’) written on buildings. There was a desire for modernisation, but we had no power to preserve our traditional way of living in the process, so I used artistic methods to articulate my grief.
I collected materials from demolished buildings; roof tiles, abandoned furniture, and the cement dust that constantly filled the air. These materials carry the traces of lost stories and express our shared sadness and indignation, transforming the debris into a portrait of the era.
And, poignantly:
I’d ride my bike to work in the morning, and the old houses would still be there, but on my way back in the afternoon, they would be gone.
Beijing Opera (2001)
In a room of its own is Beijing Opera (2001). The entire room is covered with blown-up photos of nice looking squares and spaces with old Chinese folk sitting around chatting. Again, there’s a soundscape, but this time of traditional Chinese popular music, harder for my western ears to understand, make out melody or harmonies…
‘Beijing Opera’ by Yin Xiuzhen in Heart to Heart @ the Hayward Gallery (photo by the author)
Again the point is loss. From the late 1980s into the 2000s, Beijing experienced unprecedented development that profoundly altered every aspect of city life. Vast highways, factories, and high-rise housing replaced networks of siheyuans (courtyards) and communal neighbourhoods. Again, Yin’s own account is best:
I would often pass by the neighbourhood of Houhai in Beijing, an area where many retired elders gather to play games, take part in liu niao (bringing caged birds to parks), or sing Peking Opera songs. These operatic melodies primarily draw from Chinese history, folklore and classical literature, and were once highly popular.
I found their activities very touching and they would say, ‘Come and sing something.’ I had to say: ‘I don’t know how!’ Even between this generation and my own, the old ways are dying out. The rapidly changing life of the modern city has eroded away the traditional way of living and left them at the margins of society.
Welcome to the capitalist world.
Summary
Fun, imaginative and genuinely thought provoking, Yin Xiuzhen creates bulletins from the other side of the world, from a China which has changed at a dazzling and in some ways destructive speed which we in the West probably can’t imagine – but, as you can see, she’s done it with humour and warmth, and with children running in and out and laughing. Lovely.
Related links
- Yin Xiuzhen continues at the Hayward Gallery until 3 May 2026
Books & Boots 