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Textiles (MA)

Zixin Lin

Zixin Lin, originally from Hong Kong, China, was active in various design categories before coming to RCA.

After practising various complicated techniques and materials and failing to discover her language, she decided to rethink her position and respect her inner desire for expression and creative ideas.

After learning about the Italian art movement "Arte povera" in the 1970s and the work of various artists such as Antoni Tapies, She started to try to appreciate the material itself, to use a pure approach, to explore the spiritual meaning of everyday materials, and to create with intuition.

Degree Details

School of DesignTextiles (MA)RCA2023 at Battersea and Kensington

RCA Kensington, Darwin Building, Seventh floor

By embroidering on the leather to imitate the texture of the skin.

"Treatments" is a series of works that address ideas of family, human relationships, identity and time.

Zixin contemplated disease and life more seriously after accompanying her family to heart surgery, confronted certain evasive and stagnant connections, and acquired a new vision of family bonds within East Asian culture.

The bulging skin encasing the pacemaker served as a striking reminder. Also, since inspired by Heidi Bucher's "Skinnings" series and Donald Rodney's "In the House of My Father", the skin became an important pathway of expression for the project's narrative, with "Treatments" attempting to explain to the self the reasons for ambivalence in a limited context and untangle the various quandaries that arise from the production of human ties.

In artificially shaping the "traces" of leather and other materials, it is a process of sorting out relationships and memories and a procedure of reconciliation and cure. It also questions how the individual personality can develop in a given environment to the vision of "Wholeheartedness" proposed by psychologist Karen Horney in her book "Our Inner Conflicts".

A combination of tight, wire and board
Expectation012023 11×15cm
A combination of tight, wire and board
Expectation022023 8×22cm
A combination of tight, wire and board
Expectation032023 30×40cm
Embroidery on leather and wood panels to simulate pores
Inflammation2023 20×20cm/18×25cm/11×23cm
Embroidery on leather and wood panels to simulate pores
Inflammation2023 49×49cm
Embroider the leather after making a convex effect
Shedding bark2023 20×65cm
Embroider the leather after making a convex effect
Shedding bark2023 11×13cm/11×20cm/23×35cm
Painting on canvas with toner and acrylic
Anesthesia012022 Acrylic on canvas 66×83cm
Painting on paper with toner and acrylic
Anesthesia022022 Acrylic on paper 22×30cm