Yin Xiuzhen

One Sentence – No. 86, 2011

In her multimedia artworks, Yin Xiuzhen frequently uses found objects. She arranges old clothes, shoes, furniture and simple construction materials to create complex installations that focus on issues surrounding the construction of history and memory. She makes use of the idea of clothing as a medium of individual memories in her series of artworks entitled One Sentence: 108 individual objects, each consisting of a stainless steel tin. For each of these, she uses some used clothes from a friend, which she cuts into 35mm-wide strips and lays in the can in a circular configuration: in each case, the fabric strips begin at the center with underwear fabric, and end with the outer clothing. A description of the clothing, its sequence and its numbering, are stamped on the lid of the tin in Chinese characters. The colors, patterns and materials produce an abstract portrait. The seemingly simple title – One Sentence – suggests a structural analogy with grammar: a sentence – which is a closed unit of language composed of smaller units – is formed by means of a process.