Review by Yin Xiuzhen and Chiharu Shiota – So You Cause a Nosebleed | art

gThe countryside takes many forms. Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen devotes himself to saving, sewing and stitching. While working in Beijing in the 1990s, she watched a city transform so rapidly, shedding its history with so little ceremony, that she had to save it somehow. Her display at Hayward is filled with scraps of the past, stacked, spaced and stitched together in a desperate attempt to slow the onslaught of modernization.

It clearly didn’t work, Beijing is as modern as cities come, but the works within its presentation, Heart to Heart, are an intentionally sterile gesture. A small wooden box, built by the artist’s father, is filled with a neat pile of her old clothes, all covered in concrete. The soft warmth of her personal past is preserved in the cold brutality of the compound, a substance that has irrevocably changed her city and her life. Nearby, traditional ceiling tiles are scattered on the floor around an old Chinese cabinet, all covered in a thick, dirty layer of cement powder. Everywhere you look, the past is being buried to make room for the future.

A pickup truck was stretched out in the middle of the room, its body lengthened into a concertina piece sewn together from recycled clothing. She tries, again and again, to maintain some kind of connection to humanity, to the past, in the face of unstoppable change and development.

The futility of it all is palpable and makes these early works feel palpably sad. Early installation photos show large blocks of ice made from polluted river water being symbolically cleaned by passers-by on the riverbank. “We cannot stop the physical impact of pollution on a small scale, but we can create moments of collective reflection,” she says in a quote on the wall.

This early work is deeply felt and moving. Which you can’t really say for the newer stuff here. She covers the books with old cloth; Models of cities are made from old clothes and packed into travel bags. There is an entire luggage carousel built into the exhibit and a huge plane made of torn T-shirts suspended from the ceiling. The whole thing feels tacky, like a model village made of tourist rags, a charity shop version of Legoland, and worst of all, it barely says anything.

The ideas of global trade and commerce and its exploitative capitalist tendencies are written in the materials it uses – and this is the narrative baked into the fabric of recycled textiles. But there is no criticism, no depth, and no benefit from using it in these works. Here are some old t-shirts that have been turned into Big Ben. Ta-dah.

The main installation here is a giant human heart—yes, made out of old T-shirts—intended as a space for “deep, meaningful conversations,” and I quote. You have to create your own meaning here, because the artist can’t really be bothered.

On the top floor, there is another exhibition – called “Threads of Life” – which shows Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota weaving endless webs of red and black threads. Shiota’s work has been a social media phenomenon in recent years, and Hayward clearly hopes her stunning and complex compositions will attract punters.

The first room is a tangled nightmare of crimson lines dangling from the keys. We are all connected to each other, but how do we untie these connections? I got it. The second room is filled with sentimental messages of thanks, pinned to red strings hanging from the ceiling. Literally tugging on the heart strings. I got it. The red thread is replaced by black in the final space, all woven around the beds, just as Hayward opened the world’s dirtiest, most gothic, most spidery hotel.

It’s all about blood and death and life and how we’re all connected, for sure. But it’s so superficial that it makes no sense at all, so it gives you a nosebleed. It’s about everything, and it’s basically about nothing.

But, and this is crucial, it will look good on your social media feed. Arts institutions are in a difficult bind – ha, as are the threads! Either they’re making interesting, smart, powerful art that no one comes to see, or they’re bowing to the pressures of hosting beautiful, empty immersive installations that will look good on Instagram in the desperate hope of selling some tickets. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Realistically, this is not aimed at anyone who wants a real encounter with art; It is aimed at people who want to take selfies in galleries. I hope it works out for them, because otherwise it would be a real waste of thread.