Xenophora I
2024
Driftwood, mussel shells, oyster shells, fish bones, sea glass, rock conglomerates, epoxy clay, acrylic paint
24 x 36 x 60 inches






Xenophora II
2024
Driftwood, rocks, minerals, dried seeds, oyster and clam shells, coral, seashell fragments, fish scale, fishbone, mango pit, glass, recycled plastic, resin, steel, acrylic paint
56 x 30 x 22 inches






Recursive Wanderings I
2024
Fused glass, furnace chain, LED lightbox
29 x 49 inches










Recursive Wanderings II
2024
Fused glass, lead, tin, sash chain
Site-specific installation, dimensions variable
55 x 60 inches





And When the Sea is Open
Solo exhibition @ Island Gallery, New York 
October 25 – December 21, 2024



The exhibition contemplates diasporic matters and discontinuous landscapes, through poetic and intimate approaches to materiality. The standing and hanging sculptures “Xenophora I & II” are crafted with idiosyncratic materials such as shell fragments, driftwood, beach glass and mineral conglomerates, collected from various shorelines in New York and Quebec along the St. Lawrence River. The gesture of assemblage references Xenophora (meaning “bearing foreigners”), a genus of marine gastropod molluscs that attach stones, bits of coral, and dead shells to their outer surface. These residues from the evolving past and present between land and sea, blossom into speculative fossils, as the carrier of innumerable temporalities.

“Recursive Wanderings” emerges from the precarious coalition of waste glasses with unidentifiable origins, gathered along the shorelines of North America and the artist’s homesea in Asia. Each of these found glass embodies a story of its creation and migration trajectory. When subjected to the heating and cooling temperatures of the kiln, the glasses expand and contract at varying rates, resulting in cracks that outline the incompatibility. These ongoing processes of fracturing are accentuated in the installation as microcosms of the inhuman forces, resembling unconformities during geological processes - both a seam and a rupture, revealing holes in times and places, that are also fissures in memories, senses and understanding.

The fused glass works in the exhibition are back-lit by the windows in the gallery overlooking the Bowery, the current of sights and sounds from the streets are refracted within Shuyi’s fragmented, translucent pieces. In contrast, in the work “Recursive Wanderings I”, the tensions and fractures within the glass works are illuminated by a back-lit image reminiscent of geodes, cell membranes, aerial landscapes, and primordial fossils. This image is co-created with a deep-learning neural network trained on a handmade dataset derived from the Shuyi’'s material research and text prompts, envisioning a speculative hybrid ecosystem where indefinable life forms evolve along diverse paths.
© Shuyi Cao 2024