artist statement.

Tactile, sensuous duality and dynamism holds my primary interest.

I  hope to invigorate the imagination for radical dimensions of engagement, untethered from commodity.

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I am a writer, performer, and image-maker working in simulation, machinima, and environmental installation. My text-driven digital performance practice remixes simultaneities. I composite unorthodox technologies as an extension of sensationalism latent in environment and form. 

 

My output leans heavily for viscerality on a writing practice. Prose trawled from an archive of personal missives, formative experiences, and deep-seated wells of revolt and desire, spins a thread to unify otherwise invulnerable disparate, rapidfire elements; a tightrope of ossified tissue, tensile to the touch. Language’s textural and phonic associations populate my conjured environments. Rapidity in delivery generates a multiplicity, bewilderment, and involuntary choice upon the attention. Dynamism can indelicately become barrage.

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Kelly Xi (b. 1995) calls Brooklyn home.

Xi was weaned in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, the world’s largest supplier of rare earth metals powering our polished electronics, screens, turbines, and electric engines. As consumer technology and designed obsolescence reach a capital-driven global zenith, she remains wary of the inequity between the targets and the benefactors to the blinders erected by seamlessness, convenienced of accountability. Xi’s severed hometown is the site of the Baogang Tailings Dam, a radioactive cesspool triple the size of Central Park, operated by the Bayan Obo mine of state-enterprise Baogang Steel Group.

 

Xi’s emergent work aims at a browser-based reification of ritual in apocalypse, banal labor and consumer desire, automation of hegemony, and performances that transgress domination.

 

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education.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago | 2022

MFA Art & Technology

 

Union College | SCHENECTADY, NY | 2017

BA Biology, Visual Art

skills.

experience.


Who I've collaborated with: ABSTRKT.world, Paradice Palase, REUNION, Raw Haus, JunxionNYC, XOXA NYC, Lightning Society, Pixellated, NYC Bass Collective, Caden NYC, Fang the Great

Venues: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Secret Project Robot, Google HQ, NY VR, Paper Factory Hotel, House of Yes, Rosegold, The New Work Project, Projective Space, The Keep, Superchief Gallery, Terra Firma, Tender Trap; Paris: Le Hasard Ludique

Installation Artist / Media Designer / 3D Animator | Brooklyn, NY | Dec 2016 - present

Teaching Assistant | School of the Art Institute of the Chicago | Sept 2020 - present

Graduate Gallery Installer | SAIC Galleries | Sept 2020 - present

Live Compositor | ART404 | New York, NY | Oct 2017 - Jan 2019


VR artist collective member and resident expert in VDMX, TouchDesigner and live performance visuals with programmed audioreactivity, e.g. performances at Google VR Creativity and at NY VR. Helped develop VR livestream workflows synthesizing OBS streaming with VDMX compositing and capturing realtime Tiltbrush feedback and 360° video. 3D motion graphics sequence animation for VR film "Hiraeth."

Junior Prop Stylist | FOOD NETWORK | BSTV Entertainment | New York, NY | Oct 2018 - present


Fabrication, graphic design, research + prop sourcing, facilitation for recipe development, demonstration, & culinary craft styling set assets on Food Network's The Kitchen. Highly organized and resourceful, flexible problem-solver with uncompromising work ethic. Backend software accountant for Art Department.

Curatorial Assistant | THE UNTITLED SPACE | New York, NY | Sept 2017 - Nov 2018


Worked closely with the Director on exhibition production, fabrication, installation, marketing materials, research, cataloguing, PR, artist communications, and arthandling. Coordinator and set design for two SPRING/BREAK art fair booths, as well as Special Projects floor sales. InDesign production of sales &and marketing materials. Wordpress site + Artsy platform maintenance. Event production coordinator. Friendly, resourceful service, plus high efficiency tackling organizational and database duties.

Bartender | BUEN PROVECHO | Isabel Segunda, Vieques, PR | Nov-Jan 2016

| PARADA: NEW PERU | Walnut Creek, CA | Jun-Sept 2015

| THAI THAI BISTRO | Schenectady, NY | Jan 2014-Jun 2015

Concierge | EL BLOK HOTEL | Esperanza, Vieques, PR | Nov-Jan 2016

Overnight Shrimp Packer | MOLOKAI BROODSTOCK CO. | Molokai, HI | Dec 2014-Mar 2015

Server | ZAKI KABOB HOUSE | Berkeley, CA | Sept 2012-Aug 2013

Web Media Intern | JOINN INNOVATION | Richmond, CA | Summer 2013

Public Health Intern | Tulare County Health & Human Services | Visalia, CA | Summer 2012

select exhibitions.

2020

2019

'moldable, injectable, extrudable, vacuumable' | Dinner.Tn | LIC, Queens | May 2019

'Fleeting Antidote'  epigenetic odyssey of transnational and transgenerational residue, pantomiming biological case study as installation.

2018

Relixx | BUSHWICK OPEN STUDIOS | BROOKLYN, NY | Sept 2018

curator and artist exhibiting 'Cognitive Dissonance' experiential installation

MIND GLITCH | 457 Broome | NEW YORK, NY | Aug 2018

'crypt.tn' experiential installation 

PARADICE PALASE ANNIVERSARY| Secret Project Robot | BROOKLYN, NY |June 2018

'SMOMID' audio-interactive live visuals, collaboration w/ Nick Demopoulos

2017

RAW HAUS 'Brooklyn Creative'| The New Work Project | BROOKLYN, NY | Sept 2017

'Seamless Integration' projection-installation 

SWEET 'ART Presents: GAME FACE | Ugly Duck Gallery | LONDON | Jul 2017

'esc Room' immersive installation

PUT TOGETHER | Crowell and West Galleries | SCHENECTADY, NY | May 2017

'The Pleasures Gain Intensity When Fewer and Far Between' immersive installation

STEINMETZ SYMPOSIUM | Crowell and West Galleries | SCHENECTADY, NY | April 2017

'Personhood' immersive projection-installation

SARATOGA ARTS 120° Intercollegiate Regional | SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY | Feb 2017

'Personhood' single-channel video

2016

VISUAL UNION: Homecoming Art Show | SCHENECTADY, NY | Oct 2016

'Angiosperm Dreams' audiovisual projection-mapped perfomance

STEINMETZ SYMPOSIUM | Mandeville Gallery | SCHENECTADY, NY | April 2016

'Screen series' C prints

© XI 2020