Self Devourer by Xin Liu and Yassi Mazandi’s Born-Porcelain debuted at Make Room on May 25, 2023. On June 24, 2023, at 11-6pm, its your last chance to catch the exhibition.
Xin Liu, Twisted bones: A hug, 2023, Bronze and porcelain teeth, 18⅞ x 16⅞ x 2½ in., 48.00 x 43.00 x 6.50 cm
Xin Liu’s Self Devourer
The collection of works on view in Self Devourer by Xin Liu was conceived during various points of the past two years. A scattering of moments and thoughts as I, along with the world itself, entered an unfamiliar, everything-doing-just-fine mode of being and living. I sensed a hint of repression. Every moment, every tiniest decision, every bit, byte and atom, can cause the most dramatic change. Yet, we glide through life.
All humans share 99.9% of their genetic makeup and are within 50th cousins of each other.
“Am I Asian American to you?” I once asked a friend of mine, a second-generation Asian American himself. “No.” He explained that I was not because I did not share the same kind of upbringing which formed a crucial part of his identity. Then I asked “How about your mother?” He paused for a few seconds, then looked directly into my eyes and said, “No, I guess she is not.”
When I sequenced my genome in 2019, I was overwhelmed by the amount of data produced from a tiny droplet of saliva: 3,117,275,501 base pairs. How can one decipher something that large?
That was when I dug out those papers I had made, the extra duplicates from the book of mine. Somehow, as I flipped through the pages, those unreadable bytes and bits were no longer confusing. These mysterious letters presented me with an opening: a slate of meaninglessness, of intuition, of plausible translation without understanding. And so I began to sew.
About Xin Liu
Xin Liu is an artist and engineer. She creates experiences/experiments to take measurements in our personal, social, and technological spaces in a post-metaphysical world. These include gravity and homeland, sorrow and the composition of tears, gene sequencing, and astrology. Therefore her work resides in between the measurable and ineffable, seeking tensions along with reconciliations at macro-and micro-scales that are beyond our daily experiences. In addition, her recent research and interest center around the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism. Thus featuring the metabolism of our planet and how it is affected by technological infrastructures in the past few decades.
Yassi Mazandi’s Born-Porcelain
Born-Porcelain is Yassi Mazandi’s first solo exhibition with Make Room. The exhibition follows a generative process that begins with ceramics but multiplies and transfigures through a series of experimental tests. These tests push the limits of certain formal structures across different materials and media. The paintings on view in Born-Porcelain are generated from the structure of Mazandi’s flower sculptures, which are scanned using a CT machine and then manipulated to produce digital videos from which a single, symmetrical frame is taken as the basis for painting. The selection of works on paper offers another view into Mazandi’s practice, featuring examples of her imaginary Germs on Sheets series, as well as experiments with technique and materials.
About Yassi Mazandi
Yassi Mazandi was born in Tehran, Iran, raised in Great Britain and lives and works in Los Angeles. She describes nature and her reaction to it, both conscious and subconscious, as the driving forces behind her art. The artist sculpts in porcelain, clay and bronze, and also creates works on paper and canvas. In 2019, she completed her first video artwork and, in 2021, her first NFT as well as her first AR artwork.
Mazandi’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, numerous group exhibitions, as well as a video interview with the BBC in 2013. In 2012, she was in the first group selected by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for its Artist in Residence program on Captiva Island in Florida. Her work is in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, University of California. The artist’s work can be found in other public along with major private collections.
CLICK HERE to find out about past exhibitions at this gallery.
On view: May 25, 2023 – June 24, 2023
What: Xin Liu, Yassi Mazandi
Where: Make Room Los Angeles, 6361 Waring Ave., LA,
When: June 24, 2023 11am – 6pm
Website: https://www.makeroom.la/
