artist statement
© Xi Yeling.
I work with situations of encounter, focusing on intimacy and the conditions under which connection becomes possible. My practice unfolds through performance, sound, installation and participatory formats, often inviting others to enter into carefully framed exchanges.
I am interested in how intimacy and connection can be negotiated, offered, withheld or transformed and how boundaries are communicated and experienced. Many of my works create structures in which participants become co-producers of the situation, navigating questions of vulnerability and responsibility.
Across different media, I explore how relations emerge between bodies, voices and non-human entities and how care can be understood as an active, situated practice that reshapes perception, memory and proximity. In that sense care emerges not always as a soft or harmonious concept, but as something demanding and precise. It requires attention, negotiation and the willingness to remain sometimes in uncertain or uncomfortable situations. Which can be exciting.
I understand my work as deeply political.
(April 2026)
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