Jing (Ellen) Xu

Lives and works in Queens, NY, USA

Artist statement

I am a multidisciplinary artist born in Inner Mongolia, China, and based in Queens, New York. My practice constructs structures from simple, repeatable rules and handmade units to initiate a tactile dialogue between personal memory and shared space. I explore how identity, culture, and collective belonging are shaped by everyday decisions, invisible labor, and the mutability of memory. In installations, I worked with humble materials such as popsicle sticks and modeling clay to honor repetitive care work—often unseen labor historically associated with women. These installations expand small, handmade gestures into architectural environments, emphasizing patience, accumulation, and resilience. Modeling clay is central to my work for its dual qualities of malleability and impermanence. Its surfaces undergo subtle color shifts depending on light and time, echoing how identity and memory transform with context. Clay becomes both fragile and resilient, personal and communal—a metaphor for the human condition. My work asks how simple systems can generate complexity, how repetition can become a form of storytelling, and how variation within structure mirrors lived experience. At its core, my practice proposes that memory, identity, and belonging are not fixed but mutable, like clay—shaped and reshaped by context, relationships, and time.

Artwork