6 April 2026
Artist Highlight - Xin Yue
Interview and Review
Xin Yue is a London-based interdisciplinary artist with a background in architecture, jewellery design, and research. She holds an architecture degree from the University of Melbourne and the MRes from the Royal College of Art.and develops practice-based research through the lens of Buddhist and Daoist philosophy, exploring liquid identity, impermanence, and the relationship between self, nature, and cosmos. Working across lampworked glass, accessory, installation, and light/sound, she creates contemplative, immersive environments where materials act as co-authors. Her work has been exhibited in London and internationally.
ARTIST INTERVIEW
1. Desire–Healing Landscape draws on Buddhist and Daoist philosophy to reconsider desire as a transformative force. How do these philosophical ideas shape the form and structure of the work?
Desire–Healing Landscape is informed by Buddhist and Daoist thought, where desire is understood not as good or evil, but as a shifting energy moving through cycles of change. Ideas of impermanence and Dao Fa Zi Ran shaped the work into an open, fluid structure. Through transparent, translucent, and dark elements, the series holds stillness and disturbance, clarity and obscurity at once. Life moves through inner landscapes under the force of desire, yet desire also opens a passage toward healing. Through contemplation, these emotional and spiritual landscapes are gradually revealed and reintegrated.
2. The pieces are created through lampworking, where molten glass responds directly to flame and gravity. How does this process influence the sense of spontaneity and transformation within each object?
Lampworking makes each piece inherently unrepeatable. As molten glass responds directly to flame, oxygen, heat, and gravity, subtle changes in process give rise to distinct forms. For me, glass weaving is also a meditative way of linking thought and materialising an inner emotional landscape. During making, I fully immerse myself in a particular feeling, allowing invisible structures of emotion to emerge through form. The varying thickness, tension, and rhythm of the woven lines record both the movement of the material and the flow of emotion, so spontaneity and transformation become embedded within each object itself.
3. Materials such as obsidian, cat’s-eye stone, and meteorite appear within the work. How do these materials contribute to the symbolic and material narrative of the piece?
Materials such as obsidian, cat’s-eye, and meteorite extend the work’s symbolic narrative through both material presence and meaning. For me, they represent three shifting states: inward reflection, outward exploration, and spiritual wisdom. Obsidian suggests protection and a return to inner energy; meteorite, arriving from beyond the earth, evokes movement toward what lies outside the self; cat’s-eye carries associations of perception, intuition, and awareness. These materials are not fixed symbols, but part of a dynamic balance. Between inner searching and outer exploration, the work reflects a gradual movement toward insight, awakening, and equilibrium.
4. You describe each pendant as forming a “micro-landscape.” How does the cooling process of glass shape these miniature environments?
The cooling process is essential in shaping each pendant as a micro-landscape. After lampworking, the pieces are placed in annealing sand, which for me marks a meditative ending — a gesture of release. During making, the final colours cannot be fully seen, as molten glass is intensely bright and constantly shifting. Only through cooling do certain colours, internal stresses, bubbles, and fractures begin to reveal themselves. When the piece is finally uncovered and the sand is brushed away, it feels like a quiet act of contemplation. The landscape becomes clearer, allowing a more calm and reflective reading of what has emerged.
5. Your practice often positions materials as co-authors rather than passive elements. How does glass actively participate in the making of this work?
Glass participates as an active co-author through its own physical behaviour. This work developed from lampworked glass weaving, but instead of following a regular woven structure, I used two glass rods to evoke intimacy, merging, tension, and rupture. Each pull, fusion, and separation forms voids of different scales, making the structure emerge through interaction rather than control. The meeting of soft and hard glass, as well as internal fractures caused by rapid cooling, becomes part of the work’s metaphorical language. Through these material responses, glass embodies desire, tension, healing, and the fragmented process of reintegration.
6. The installation combines jewellery, spatial arrangement, and contemplation. How does the relationship between object and environment shape the viewer’s experience?
The series was originally conceived as a constellation of landscape-like pieces in different scales. The larger sculptural forms reflect longer periods of meditative making, while the smaller pieces record fragmented moments of thought and emotion from daily life through glass. Together, they form a journey of feeling, reflection, and inner transformation.
Spatial arrangement plays an integrative role within the installation. It brings together works made across different moments in time and places them into a shared environment, where they no longer exist as isolated objects but as an interconnected emotional landscape. In this way, linear time is disrupted: traces of the past, the experience of the present, and an uncertain sense of the future converge in one space. The installation invites both myself and the viewer to stand at a single point of contemplation, where different temporal states overlap.
7. Concepts such as impermanence and fluid identity are central to your practice. How are these ideas made visible through the material behaviour of glass?
Glass makes impermanence and fluid identity visible through both its symbolism and behaviour. In Buddhist thought, glass or liuli is associated with clarity, wisdom, and the transparent mind. Materially, lampworking glass begins as silica from sand, transformed by heat and mineral oxides into different colours, transparencies, and states of stability. For me, this movement from sand to glass to object reflects the Buddhist idea of dependent arising: forms do not exist independently, but appear temporarily through the meeting of conditions. Making with glass therefore becomes a way of witnessing transformation, instability, and momentary becoming in material form.
8. Within The Invisible Made Visible, the work foregrounds subtle forces such as heat, gravity, and time. What aspects of these processes do you hope viewers become aware of when encountering the installation?
I hope viewers become aware of the subtle forces that shape the work beyond what is immediately visible. In the flame, different glasses melt, fuse, pull, and separate, making visible desire, tension, and mutual transformation. Time leaves traces through cooling and gradual emergence, while light and shadow shape how the work is perceived. Inspired by The Praise of Shadows, I want the installation to reflect on existence itself: neither nature nor the self is fixed, but constantly shifting between yin and yang, light and shadow, clarity and obscurity. Like the self, the work remains in a continual process of becoming.
FLUID FORM AND INNER LANDSCAPES
Review by Chih-Yang Chen, Art Director
Xin Yue’s work sits somewhere between object, environment, and state of mind. Drawing from Buddhist and Daoist thinking, she approaches making less as a way to define form and more as a way to observe change. Desire–Healing Landscape reflects this clearly. It doesn’t present a fixed idea of desire but treats it as something unstable, shifting, and at times contradictory.
The installation feels more like a field than a composition. Glass elements, stones, and smaller wearable pieces are arranged in a way that resists hierarchy. Nothing dominates, nothing fully resolves. Instead, there is a sense of things coexisting, sometimes in tension, sometimes in balance. Transparency sits next to opacity, calm next to disturbance. The work doesn’t try to unify these conditions, which is where its strength lies.
The making process is very present. Lampworked glass carries traces of heat, gravity, and movement in a direct way. You can sense where the material has been pulled, where it resisted, and where it settled. These are not refined away. Instead, they become part of how the work communicates. It feels less controlled, more negotiated. The material is not being shaped into an idea but shaping the outcome itself.
The use of obsidian, meteorite, and cat’s-eye stone extends the work beyond the immediacy of glass. These materials bring in a different kind of time, something slower, less human. But they are not used in an overly symbolic way. They sit within the work more quietly, adding weight without explaining themselves. This restraint keeps the piece from becoming illustrative.
What is interesting is how the work handles scale and fragmentation. Some elements feel like small, personal objects, others more like fragments of a larger landscape. Together they suggest a kind of internal geography, but not one that can be mapped clearly. It’s more like moving through states of feeling than moving through space.
There is also a strong sense that the work is unfinished in a deliberate way. Not incomplete, but open. The forms don’t settle into a final reading, and the installation doesn’t guide the viewer toward a single interpretation. This openness reflects the ideas behind it, especially the notion that identity and experience are not fixed but constantly shifting.
Rather than explaining these ideas, Xin lets them remain embedded in the material and the way the work is encountered. It asks for time and attention but doesn’t demand it. If anything, it creates a quiet space where change can be noticed rather than defined.