Collective Subconscious

Collective Subconscious is a large-scale interactive installation created by Beijing-based artist Yin Xiuzhen. She has spent the last twenty-five years creating and displaying works that reflect her surrounding environment and her relationship with it. Her works are usually personal and environmentally engaging and typically site-specific.

Collective Subconscious, which is composed of a bisected minivan connected by a long tube covered in a quilt made of found garments, allows viewers to enter and have a seat on a small bench, and listen to the Chinese pop song “Beijing, Beijing”¹ emitting from the speakers. It is ethereal and a place for contemplation meant to break the silence traditionally present within the gallery space.

Video: Timelapse installation

About Yin Xiuzhen

A leading figure in contemporary Chinese art, Yin Xiuzhen has worked primarily in site-specific installation and sculpture since the early 1990s. Her work addresses issues on both an environmental scale and a personal one and often employs quotidian materials, including found textiles.

Projects 92 presents her large-scale sculpture Collective Subconscious, composed of a bisected minivan connected by a long tube covered in a quilt made of found garments. The public is welcomed inside this transformed conveyance, where they will find a cozy refuge complete with low stools and soft pop music—a space that invites visitors to break the silence of the hushed gallery, reinventing it as a place for conversation and discussion.

Collective Subconscious has been exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and NYC MoMA.

Exhibition photos