Negotiated Skin

Negotiated Skin is an immersive, interdisciplinary solo exhibition by New York-based artist Freda Xinyue Xia, presented at Gallery 456, the visual arts exhibition space of the Chinese American Arts Council. Bringing together wearable sculpture, suspended fiber works, mineral-pigment paintings, and Chinese paintings, the exhibition creates an evolving environment in which soft sculptural forms and paintings enter into dialogue across body, material, culture, time, and space.

For this exhibition, Xia develops translucent, membrane-like forms through layering, suspension, collapse, and visible acts of repair. Instead of depicting the body directly, these works register its presence, moving between garment, sculpture, and installation. Alongside them, mineral-pigment paintings of heads glimpsed in New York City subway spaces offer a figurative counterpoint, tracing bodies in motion, proximity, and separation.

Across these media, Negotiated Skin explores boundaries between intimacy and exposure, abstraction and figuration, material fragility and shared presence. Skin emerges not as a fixed border, but as a changing surface shaped by pressure, contact, and repair. Visitors are invited to move through the installation and encounter the work through proximity, movement, and perception.

Chinese American Arts Council’s Gallery 456 Visual Arts Exhibition Series is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Gallery 456 / Chinese American Arts Council, 456 Broadway, New York, United States

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