Acrylic-painted antique shoe molds, 2015.
Ying Xu: ‘In the series ‘Opulence Rewritten’, I work with antique wooden shoe molds, once purely utilitarian tools of craft and domestic labor, now recast as sculptural carriers of memory and tension. Hand-painted with traditional Chinese floral motifs and overlaid with the Louis Vuitton monogram, each mold becomes a meeting point between ancestral ornament and global luxury branding.
This dialogue reveals the contradictions embedded in our perception of luxury: the mass-produced yet exclusive, the decorative versus the utilitarian, the branded surface that eclipses the anonymous maker. By reclaiming the shoe mold, a form once meant to shape and support the human foot, I give voice back to an object of service, reframing it as a vessel of cultural and gendered resonance.
Each piece is both intimate and critical: a sculptural essay on value, inheritance, and care. The floral motifs recall traditions of patience and devotion; the branded patterns expose the seductions and illusions of consumer desire. Together, they form a dialogue between what is remembered and what is consumed. I see these works as tactile archives: part relic and part resistance. They invite us to hold beauty differently: not as a surface to be owned, but as something accumulated slowly through history, gesture and exchange.’
Measurements: 25 x 7 cm.
© Ying Xu.
