Yin Xiuzhen
Heart to Heart
Hayward Gallery, London

Disused clothing “bears special traces of people’s lived experiences,” the catalog for “Heart to Heart” quotes Yin Xiuzhen as saying. This explains the use of found garments across her practice: in the One Sentence series (2011), trousers, shirts, and underwear are stitched together like film rolls, while in the Bookshelf series (2009–13), they are transformed into sculptural books, the stories permeating the textiles replacing word and image. In Yin’s mind, the patchworks collate people’s memories into records of cultural climate. Collective experience is emphasized not just through material but also the communal spaces she creates, such as the show’s titular installation, a yurt-sized heart draped in red attire and housing cozy seating, and Collective Subconscious (Blue) (2007), a minivan with an elongated passenger compartment. Yet, aside from a few selfie takers, A Heart to Heart (2025) stood empty during my visit, and viewers were barred from entering Collective Subconscious due to safety concerns. This implanted a suspicion that grew as I continued through the exhibition—a vacuousness underpinned the installations, where homogenized pictures of community superseded critical questions: how important is friction within society and interpersonal relationships? How might we bridge differences?