“I want to make people realize, maybe trying to think, about the things that they feel that's lost in their memories.”

In his 1998 book, Relational Aesthetics, French curator Nicolas Bourriaud coined the term “relational aesthetics” as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space,” which in simple words describes the artists’ tendency to make art based on or inspired by human relations and their social context. In this way, artists can be considered facilitators of information exchange, giving audiences the power and hopefully the means to effect change in the world.

London-based Chinese artist Zhilin Xiang takes a contemporary take on this 1990s term, using early internet aesthetics, low-file imagery, and early 2000s blog style to document the complex emotional and physical layers of displacement, working within the tenuous layers of what is erased by constant movement between countries or emotional spaces and what memory struggles to hold.

Your Room (2022), an ongoing project, embodies this term through a photographic collection featuring close-ups of intimate atmospheres in low-lit settings: unmade beds, people talking and playing in the background, and empty rooms with few remaining signs of habitation (pillows, blankets). These spaces act as the embodiment of migration and memory. Here, the artist is a mere observer, recording the shared physical boundaries of a space where a deep emotional layer of lived experiences is archived. The collection of photos is a profound link to the artist's own experience, one marked by an earlier life spent moving between countries and emotional terrains. Underneath the boundaries of a space, there is a sense of collective experiences of fragmentation and intimacy, where a room is more than just a space to rest; it is a gateway between community, values, and beliefs, and with the fluidity of people's memory, the physical space starts to morph with our own identity over time.

The visual effect of this collection is reminiscent of the world of Beijing Silvermine archival vernacular photography, exploring Chinese memory through found/personal negatives in the decade following the Cultural Revolution, and Nan Goldin's intimate documentary style of domestic spaces as sites of vulnerability. Yet their work holds a different critical undertone. The artist takes an active role in creating new images, relying not only on constructing an archive of displacement, intimacy, and nostalgia through the nature of personal and collective memory but also on holding space for these dialogues to come to life.

In Year 2010, a photography record resembling a photo album, the artist took yet another step into exploring the interplay between social perception and physical representation. This collection analysis uses absence itself as content, as it documents the lives of the artist and their family in 2010 and now as a parallel to the broader Chinese sociopolitical narratives. Following the same visual ethos of the artist as a memory keeper, this project creates a temporal rupture where the gaps of time reveal as much as what is presented. Taking inspiration from the artist's own experiences post-2010 Chinese economic/social shifts, after the undeniable silence after China's “One World, One Dream” Olympic prosperity, the artist intentionally mixes current and past realities and becomes the threat that connects all memories. By doing so, creating a visual language of post-memory and inherited trauma. Yet, even though the main area of focus is on absence, the intentional imitation of pre-2010 aesthetics becomes a form of healing practice. By recreating photographic styles, the artist unintentionally creates a language of repair and continuation rather than only nostalgia.  

On a visual note, this project bears similarities with Chino Otsuka's "Imagine Finding Me", a celebrated photographic series in which the artist inserts herself into childhood photos, exploring temporal displacement. Except in Xiang’s depiction of time and memory, there is a mix of personal and collective representation of these shattered experiences and memories; the mystery, or rather the feeling of not being able to pinpoint exact dates, is part of her work’s allure: you can sense these are portraits of a person's life, but you’re not always sure if it is actually an old photo or a record of a current life. Which, you might fathom, is rather like how memory functions.

Both Your Room and the Year 2010 signal a broader expansion of a contemporary inquiry into space, memory, and fragmentation, creating a vivid depiction of many current diaspora atmospheres. As Xiang's practice expands, with an upcoming exhibition, A New Feeling (February 3–8, 2026), curated by Jake Walters at Four Corners Gallery in London, and the Your Room (2022-ongoing) project transitioning from Instagram to a dedicated website, we may inquire how their practice can broaden the dialogue and hold space for conversations about shared experiences of displacement.

In the end, this collection of works is not only a personal exploration but also a depiction of the intimacy of perpetual movement, the weight of being a diaspora's documentarian, and the quiet radicalism of saying: Your room, your memory, matters.

Find more about the artist here.

Cover image:

Your Room by Zhilin Xiang.

All images courtesy of Zhilin Xiang.