Xinwei Che, Pressing into cracks and blooms.

Xinwei Che
Pressing into cracks and blooms., 2023
Inkjet print on cotton rag paper
23.5 x 32.5 inches (framed)

"In 2023-24, I made thousands of unfired clay bowls to meditate on being in the present. Each bowl was filled with traditional Chinese medicine upon drying. Held within porous clay walls, the vivid medicine would inevitably seep through, rupturing the bowls. In making this work, I practiced accepting uncertainty and change. I learned to be with the fear and discomfort of being on the cusp of transformation. Sometimes existing structures need to rupture to allow new possibilities to arise." - Xinwei Che

Xinwei Che has a material-centered, temporal practice. She attends to the rhythms of material movements to expand time and resist its easy commodification.

She is from Singapore and currently lives in Vancouver, BC, on the traditional, unceded territories of the of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (2015) and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art & Design (2022). She was awarded the National Arts Council Overseas Art Scholarship for her BFA, and the Young Talent Programme Prize in 2017. With support from the National Art Gallery of Kuala Lumpur and the National Arts Council of Singapore, she has collaborated with communities to create libraries for shadows and for fears.

In her solo exhibition at Esplanade (Singapore) and artist residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village (Taipei), she created a series of material performances that hold space for experiencing deep geological time and embodied ritual time. She is a sessional faculty at Emily Carr University and recently showed her works in It begins with knowing and not knowing at Richmond Art Gallery.