Sculpture Talk: Zadie Xa

The was the sixth in a series of talks exploring sculptural practice today, celebrating the Year of Sculpture in the run up to Yorkshire Sculpture International in summer 2019.

Zadie Xa spoke in February 2019 at Leeds Art Gallery about her exhibitions and performances.

Through performance, video, painting and textiles, she interrogates the overlapping and conflation of cultures that inform self-conceptualised identities, notions of self and her experience within the Asian diaspora. Her intricate hand sewn fabric works stitch together familiar symbols of yin-yangs, knives, lucky numbers and monolid eyes, all operating within a system of personalised semiotics.

Listen to Zadie’s talk below:

Zadie Xa uses these exaggerated motifs both to combat and engage with perceptions of Asian identity and otherness and to aspire to create new and alternative Asian identity narratives, which are often fantastical and within the realm of the supernatural.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Paradise,  Night Gallery, LA (2018), Body Armor,  MoMA PS1, New York (2018), HOMEBOY3030: Return the Tiger 2 the Mountain,  Union Pacific, London (2018), The Conch,  Sea Urchin and Brass Bell,  Pump House Gallery, London (2017).

This series of talks were programmed in partnership with Leeds Beckett University, Leeds Art Gallery and Yorkshire Sculpture International.