Focal Point: Xiaojing Yan
Xiaojing Yan, Under the Pines, Over the Clouds, 2025. Installation. PHOTO: Scott Lee. COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO ART GALLERY.
Yan’s studio is atypical as it functions as both artist atelier and a scientific research laboratory that closely examines the visualities of organic matter. Several years ago, Yan experienced a personal loss that prompted her to embark upon a prolonged exploration of ideas surrounding life and death, transformation and impermanence. She visited a lingzhi mushroom farm in China, an experience that forged a strong impression. Upon returning to Canada, Yan began experimenting with the biological properties of mycelium — which is the collection of hyphae, the fibrous root branches of fungus — by cultivating it in wood chips. As she became more familiar with its cultivation patterns, she began growing the mycelium in synthetic moulds stuffed with wood chips.
Through trial and error, Yan learned to carefully control light, temperature and humidity to allow the mycelium to flourish. Once the mycelium had taken root, she removed the synthetic mould, allowing the mycelium to propagate into mushrooms. These would drop microscopic spores that covered everything around the installation in a thin layer of brown dust. Eventually, what was first directed by Yan’s guiding hand was later appropriated and acted upon by enigmatic forces of nature. This, in turn, prompts her audience to speculate on the ways that nature can reclaim and heal itself from our anthropogenic destruction of the planet.
Xiaojing Yan, Spirit Cloud, 2017. Freshwater pearl, filament, and aluminum, 112 x 325 x 300 cm. PHOTO: Toni Hafkenscheid.
This article is an excerpt and is available in full in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Studio Magazine.
