Installation view of Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
Spanning the entire lower-level galleries of Hayward Gallery, Heart to Heart brings together seminal projects from Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen over the past three decades, alongside new commissions and historic works that she has reimagined for the space. Through large-scale installations made from everyday objects, industrial materials and used items of clothing, the exhibition invites visitors to see the familiar in new ways, revealing the personal and collective stories that these usually overlooked items have carried.
Yin Xiuzhen is renowned for her use of secondhand clothing, concrete, food and household ephemera in her immersive installations and sculptures. Being a pioneering artist of her generation who first emerged on the contemporary Chinese art scene in the early 1990s, Yin's career developed at the same time as major cultural, economic and social changes in China. Observing the country’s fast economic growth, urbanisation and global integration, Yin was keen to explore how living in an increasingly connected world can impact identity. She began working with mundane materials - including cement, ceramics, glass, clay, food and household objects - to uncover the traces of memory, personal history and time embedded within them.
Installation view of Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. Collective Subconscious (Blue), (2007). Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
Heart to Heart comprehensively presents Yin’s artistic journey across installation, sculpture, photography, video, wall-based works and archival materials of her early performances. The exhibition takes its name from a new commission: a huge, immersive textile installation shaped like a human heart. Inviting visitors to step inside, the work was built from used clothing items collected from a wide array of people, signifying the gathering of our shared memories to create a space for reflection on how our individual and collective experiences intertwine.
Installation view of Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
"The heart is our human engine and, in my culture, it transcends the mind. ‘Heart-to-heart’ is a way to connect and I am delighted to have this chance to engage in a heart-to-heart dialogue with visitors of the Hayward Gallery, drawing on my thirty-plus years of practice; this exhibition is an opportunity for mutual exchange, one I hope will generate sparks," said Yin Xiuzhen.
Installation view of Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. Portable City: London (2025). Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, including a newly commissioned essay by curator and writer Lydia Yee alongside a conversation between Yin and exhibition curator Yung Ma, available to buy in store and online at the Hayward Gallery shop.
Installation view of Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart. Ruined City (1996) Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy of the Hayward Gallery.
Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart was realised with generous support provided by the Huo Family Foundation. Key support is received from Beijing Commune, Eleanor and Francis Shen, and Max and Monique Burger and the TOY family.
About the Artist
Born 1963 in Beijing, Yin Xiuzhen has held numerous notable solo exhibitions internationally, including Piercing the Sky at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai (2024–25), Yin Xiuzhen: Sky Patch at CHAT – Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile in Hong Kong (2020), Slow Release at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2016), at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in Germany (2012–13), and a solo presentation at Museum of Modern Art in New York entitled Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen (2010).
Yin has also participated in many group exhibitions and collection displays. Her work was featured in Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2024–25); Global(e) Resistance at the Centre Pompidou (2020–21); Asian Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Guggenheim Museum (2017–18); The World Is Yours at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2009); and Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum (2007). Furthermore, Yin has been widely shown in international biennials and triennials. She exhibited in the Chinese Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and returned to the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 as part of the main exhibition. Yin’s works can be found in the numerous public and private collections worldwide, such as Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; M+, Hong Kong; and National Art Museum of China, Beijing, among others.
About the Exhibition
Dates: 17 Feb – 3 May 2026
Venue: Hayward Gallery
Courtesy of the Artist and Hayward Gallery, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
