In person / Exhibition / Biomaterial
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, 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.
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 20
6:00–9:00 PM
Closing Walkthrough / Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 22
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM
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.
Freda Xia is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in New York. With a background in painting, fashion design, and textiles, she is currently pursuing an MFA in Textiles at Parsons School of Design. Her practice moves between biomaterials, wearable sculpture, soft textile structures, and installation. Working with hand-reeled raw silk, wool, fruit waste, and protein-based biomaterials, she creates membrane-like forms that explore bodily memory, rupture, repair, and transformation. Her work investigates textiles as living systems of protection, adaptation, and material alternatives to petroleum-based surfaces.