Fabric of memory: the artists turning secondhand clothes into monumental art

Yin Xiuzhen builds cities from donated clothing while Chiharu Shiota weaves found objects into vast webs of thread. Now the two are exhibiting their massive, moving installations in two parallel exhibitions These clothes are not “secondhand”, says Yin Xiuzhen, the Beijing-born artist known for creating large-scale installations out of found garments and keepsakes. “I prefer to call them ‘used’ or ‘worn’,” she explains. “Clothes that have been ‘worn’ carry a lot of information … like a second skin, imprinted with social meaning.” In some of Yin’s works the clothes are her own, telling a personal story. In others, the clothes are collected, stained and stretched across towering steel frames resembling planes, trains or organic forms. Yin is showing a selection of these works in Heart to Heart, an exhibition occupying the lower floor of London’s Hayward Gallery. “Worn clothing acts as a narrator in my work … the lived experience is embedded in the fabric,” she says. Continue reading...

By Marigold Warner