Kelly Xi’s neon sculptures mimic the saturation of screen-mediated diaspora, repurposed to elicit the fruiting of fungi. To beckon renewal from what is left to landfill, she links a language for leaving a rare earth lake hometown with a social geology that spans tectonic time, colonialism, and emerging technologies. Through fermentations, the photic and olfactory, she provides lures for audiences to seek better relationships with more-than-human agents that support our ability to live.
Benthos of the Synthetic Suns / Kelly Xi (US), Photo: Kevin Briggs
Kelly Xi (US)
Kelly Xi is an artist and researcher who critically leverages the tools of machine learning, game engines, digital ceramics, and neon to embed audiences in material-relational visions for livable futures. Her work engages intimately with the emissive materiality of digitization, to ask, “in which ways can art metabolize the screen?”