Ying Xu is a visual artist based in Feuerthalen, Zürich, Switzerland. Her practice centers on the resonance between the body and consciousness, reflecting on subtle interactions between human experience, nature, and the passage of time. With a refined sensitivity to materials, Xu evokes poetic reflections on presence, fragility and transformation. Grew up in Beijing and received rigorous academic training in painting. She studied at the Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and earned her BFA in oil painting from CAFA, one of China’s most renowned art institutions. Before relocating to Switzerland, she taught at Shenzhen Art School for 13 years, where she continued her research into classical painting traditions from the Renaissance to Impressionism. This foundation in observation, composition, and emotional depth continues to inform all aspects of her work.
Though Xu’s materials now range from oil and acrylic painting to small-scale drawings, textile installations, hand-mended fabric, and soft sculptural forms, painting remains at the core of her practice. She approaches each material with a painter’s eye and emotional precision. In recent years, she has developed a deep fascination with aged fabrics, used objects, and modest readymade materials from daily life. These carry not only tactile memory, but also cultural traces and emotional residue. For Xu, to work with these materials is to reawaken their quiet lives and extend their meaning into the present.
Her long-term mending project regards sewing not simply as a craft, but as a non-violent gesture, a way to care, to listen and to respond to what has been broken or overlooked. The act of mending becomes a quiet witness to loss, memory, and the imperfection of being.
Ying Xu: ‘I’m very keen on observing objects closely and try to covey my visual and emotional response to them. The connections between visual perception, subconscious and the emotional conveyance are the core of my work.’
© Ying Xu.
