Xin Liu, The Mothership (2023), Courtesy of the Artist and Make Room, Los Angeles. Photographer: Daniel Greer
The interview that follows is a review of science_technology_society winter 2024 resident Xin Liu‘s work by writer and editor Holly E J Black. Black explores Liu’s work and her research during her residency.
Holly E J Black: Before we begin discussing the specificities of your residency at Delfina Foundation, I’d love to speak more broadly about your distinct approach towards bio technologies and cryogenics. It seems as if you have been following a new line of inquiry that comes from a physical, personal position, as opposed to a more removed association with narrative science fiction and space exploration.
Xin Liu: The research really began when I was considering freezing my eggs. I am in my thirties and as many women do nowadays, I was in between the choices between my career, my family and my health. It is the same wrestling that I do in my work, with the epistemological standpoint of science and our projection of the future – one of continual uplifting advancement and a singular, directional understanding of time. Lots of my work, whether it be handling rocket debris or commissioning satellites, is playing with these concepts of time, but always in relation to physical objects.
Now, practically speaking, I am the object. I am seduced by the possibility to pause (partially) my own passage of time through egg freezing. Cryogenics is just the more extreme technology of the same idea. I have been reading On Not Dying (2020) by Abou Farman. He writes about how the ideals of secular immortality are in fact rather materialistic, in the way it treats the human body like a machine. Yet, there is also a fanatical, cult-like element within the various movements concerned with extending life. I’ve also been reading the research of Sarah Frankin, who is an expert on the history of IVF and its future. It is enlightening to see these two different perspectives on time and death, but also kinship and the lineage of human existence.
HB: What you’re speaking about is a duality of the secular and the spiritual, but there’s also a duality in the notion of reproduction, in the productivity of the human body. We are living in a time where some societies are stoking moral panic concerning birth rates and gender identity, while at the same time demanding that everybody shows their worth through their direct, quantifiable contribution to the labour workforce.
XL: Feminism is full of contradictions. One could say egg freezing is a tech-liberation of the woman’s body, but at the same time, I experienced a rejection of this solution from my body. The pain is in my flesh, no matter how many books I read. My intellectual understanding of the female body is fundamentally detached from how I’m physically feeling. Not to mention the overmarketing and capital interest in fem-tech.
HB: This innate sensibility is something you are obviously grappling with in your work. For example, in a piece such as The Mothership (2023), you are building a visual lexicon and a tactility that relates to these complex and convoluted ideas. You have the figurative beauty of a bronze mould of your mouth, coupled with this advanced self-cooling system, which is a real feat of engineering. Is it important for you to relay that mutable physicality, and that material connection with the viewer?
XL: I want activate the sculpture so it can speak to the history of our museums, and the ways in which natural specimens have been treated and preserved. The sculpture being frozen makes the work constantly performing, rather than being static. Of course, it also mirrors the act of egg freezing. When I was learning about the procedure, I was shocked by how mundane it can be. One would be given the option to have their own refrigerator or a shared one. If one shares the storage freezer, the temperature will fluctuate every time the door is opened, which can impact the eggs. That is literally the same to what I must deal with for my salad at home because I have a leaky fridge!
HB: So, you’re dealing with these very routine elements, along with the enormity of what is actually taking place?
XL: That’s right. I think casting is quite an interesting process because you’re duplicating a surface, and then you are treating it through rubbing and cleaning to create something very familiar. Silicone has a life-like skin texture, and I wanted something that looked both natural and strangely clinical, because that’s our reality. I had to think, how do you find some kind of warmth in something so brutal and alienating?
HB: Many of your sculptures are also coded with the language of horror and science fiction, particularly the Alien aesthetics of HR Geiger, which have their own associations with invasive reproduction. They are both grotesque and alluring.
XL: I do find the idea of pregnancy to be the most monstrous, terrifying, but also magnificent and intimate experience. I have not frozen my eggs yet. The next step of the project has much more to do with the idea of kinship.
HB: That is a very specific term, which is key to your research during your Delfina residency. What does it mean to you?
XL: I am an immigrant. I grew up in China and I met my husband in the USA, and we now live together in the UK. When I was a kid, my parents were very busy. I was brought up by my grandparents, my aunties and my uncles. I spent a few semesters in a boarding school run by one of my teachers. I’m an only child, but I grew up with a lot of people, in a big neighbourhood family.
Now we’re in the UK, with no family around whatsoever. I’m building this kinship of who the uncles and aunties would be for my children. They would be our friends, many of whom are immigrants. I have come to realise how a massive social structure has to come together to raise a child. It’s like conducting a theatre, while also letting it run itself. Kinship is these multicultural, intimate relationships. I also learnt so much from the queer community, where the parenthood is so fluid and beautiful. Delfina is a community in and of itself.
HB: How does this idea of community play into your work, as someone who – I must assume – is involved in quite extensive collaboration, given your background in engineering and the way your pieces are fabricated?
XL: Lots of my work is serendipitous. Many of my ideas and inspiration come from my friends. An idea cannot be rushed, often it slowly unravels. There is always something that is sticky and then sparks the inquiry. For example, when I built a robotic sculpture to send my wisdom tooth into space, it was me trying to reconcile this intense feeling of leaving home and connect something abstract with something physical in my hand. The work is a vehicle guiding me through questions. That is what I love about both art and science, in comparison to design and engineering. They are both about exploration, as opposed to any prescribed outcome.
Holly E J Black is Contributing Arts Editor at The World of Interiors. She is the author of Artists on Art: How They See, Think and Create, and is currently writing a book on the history of printmaking, to be published by Yale University Press in 2026.