Xin /shin/ Chen is a Nottingham-based Chinese visual artist.
She completed an MFA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2025.
Her work has been exhibited in the UK and China.
Artist Statement
My practice explores an imaginative landscape shaped by intuition, weaving together unreturnable childhood experiences with those from everyday life, imagination, and dreams. Growing up in a hilly urban area continues to shape how I perceive and navigate the world, and I'm excited to discover what the view unfolds after this turn.
I challenge the urge to rational and lineage actions in this rapidly competitive world,. Particularly guided by the Taoist belief in spontaneous action, which leads to the natural harmony of the universe, my approach to materials and subjects is informed by effortless encounters, which often bring them into being by chance rather than by intention.
My concepts are centred on playfulness, wandering, and assemblage, embracing a handmade quality. By reconfiguring forms inspired by nature, crafts, and architectural, linguistic and personal fragments, I transform these pieces into spaces that are strange yet familiar, inviting moments of exploration and quiet recognition.
This evolving practice reflects my interest in the shifting relationship between the human world and the natural environment, and in the possibilities of unusual combinations between materials, memories, and forms freed from historical allusion. I invite viewers into tactile worlds where curiosity, memory, and abstraction coexist.