ARTIST / WHO ART YOU
Freda Xia
Biomaterials, fibres & wearable sculpture
Exploring skin, repair and soft structures through biomaterials, textiles and wearable sculpture.
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Practice & background
New York-based artist and designer Freda Xinyue Xia combines Chinese painting with fashion and textile training at Parsons. She studies how materials change with bodies, pressure and time, beyond the outline of a garment.
Hand-reeled silk, natural dyes, gelatin and silk protein support her membrane-like structures. Gravity, tension, rupture and repair provide conditions for form to emerge.
Her 2026 solo exhibition Negotiated Skin at the Chinese American Arts Council’s Gallery 456 was listed by New York Textile Month. Wearable sculpture, hanging fibre pieces and painting approached skin as a boundary continually altered by contact.
In Who Art You, Xia discusses embedding plant fibres in gelatin and combining gelatin strips with reused plastic bags. A piece may be worn or suspended as an installation, connecting material research to bodily experience and reuse.
Looking at the work
Textiles, biomaterials and wearable installation, examining bodies, softness, repair and material lifecycles through gelatin, natural fibers and reused materials.
IN THE ARTIST’S WORDS
“I would tell her to trust the process and go for it.”Explore the conversation ↗
Works & practice
Exhibition image for Negotiated Skin: a wearable membrane-like structure and the body.
Image source: New York Textile Month · View original source ↗A few words to look with
Biomaterial
Here, experimental creative materials made using ingredients of biological origin. Bio-based does not automatically mean biodegradable in every setting or impact-free; formulation, additives and processing matter.
Upcycling
Turning materials that might otherwise be discarded into new uses or works, often retaining and reorganising the material. Look for traces of its previous life and what the new use changes.
Textile & fibre art
Art using threads, fibres, cloth or related structures through weaving, stitching, embroidery or unconventional materials. The time and bodily labour of making can also be meaningful.
Works & further reading
Continue with the artist’s own work and institutional sources.
Artist website ↗Instagram ↗Profile based on the sources listed above; the conversation informs the viewing questions and work guides.