Xinwei Che
Education:
MFA, ECU
BFA, Sculpture, Rhode Island School of Design
Bio
Xinwei Che creates site-responsive performance-installations with clay, water and medicinal herbs. She has received the National Arts Council of Singapore Overseas Art Scholarship and Young Talent Programme Prize. Xinwei has participated in residencies with the Vermont Studio Centre, Taipei Artist Village, National Art Gallery of Kuala Lumpur and Esplanade Singapore. With support from the National Arts Council of Singapore, Richmond Art Gallery and Shumka Centre, she has collaborated to create works that explore material memory, ecological history and tactile communication.
Websites:
Research Interests
Xinwei deepens our experience of time through embodied material performance, installation and film. She seeks to challenge definitions of time and productivity in late-stage capitalism. Her works evolve, embracing change and inviting viewers to contend with impermanence. Long before clay is excavated and packaged into 50 lb bags, it exists as mineral particles, eroded from the earth’s crust by wind and water over millions of years. She makes visible this deep geological time by letting clay remain alive in her work, drying, cracking, staining, sagging and dissolving.
In Xinwei’s 2022 installation-performance, Maintenance in Progress, she gradually covered part of the ECU concourse with vibrant raw clay over 40 hours. Mending cracks that appeared and returning each piece of dried clay to water at the end of the performance, she questioned our assumptions about labour, futility and value. In her recent exhibition at Richmond Art Gallery, Xinwei pinched pots on herself, making vessels that mirror and record the physical space of her body. These vessels grow from a bed of clay slip and like living beings, need to be watered regularly.
