“To me, 'home' is not a fixed place — it is constantly shifting, both in its meaning and in its boundaries.”

The concept of home is an intricate and multifaceted construct that permeates everybody's minds and daily lives, transcending the mere physical structure of a house. A concept deeply ingrained in our human existence, encompassing a multitude of social, spatial and emotional connections. But do we truly take the time to consider what home means?

Chinese multimedia artist Yijia Wu’s latest work, Soap Tiles, which was exhibited at Homesick at Sarabande Foundation, can be described as a poetic expansion and deconstruction of the concept of home. “It’s no longer a noun, but a verb. A home that shifts,  dissolves, reforms. A home that can’t always be seen, but can be felt.” Wu explains. “In this way, absence  becomes a form of presence — highlighting what’s lost, what lingers, and what we continue to carry.”

Wu, who graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA in Fine Art in 2021 and completed her MA studies in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2023, has an immersive, unorthodox and unique visual language that can be followed throughout her entire body of work. A raw exploration of everyday objects within an absurd yet recognisable lens. Wu's pieces introduce audiences to her personal experience as a migrant, employing familiar materials and objects that carry deep personal and cultural weight, triggering intimate recollections of memories and shared stories. These installations and sculptures are transformed into emotional artifacts and conversation starters.

Through her dynamic and vibrant installations, sculptures, and performances, Wu creates a visual language that is both challenging and familiar, allowing audiences and herself to consider the true meaning of home across geopolitical dimensions, emphasising its continuous, emotional, and embodied narratives.

What key moments or experiences led you to become the multidisciplinary artist you are today?  

It’s difficult to pinpoint a single defining moment — instead, it has been a gradual accumulation of lived experiences that quietly shaped the way I think and work. Moving between places, adapting to new environments and routines, and observing the subtle details of the everyday have all filtered into my practice over time. Rather than a sudden turning point, it’s been a continuous unfolding — where navigating different cultural landscapes naturally led me to work across disciplines, combining materials, gestures, and forms that mirror the layered and shifting nature of my own experience.  

In your statement, you mentioned that your practice explores the everydayness and both collective and individual experiences of migration. Could you elaborate on these conceptual approaches and how they impact your visual language?  

The starting point of each work often stems from a specific story or memory rooted in the cultures I’ve lived in. My approach to migration is not only concerned with its geopolitical dimensions, but with how it is experienced as a continuous, emotional, and embodied process.  

I work with everyday objects — chairs, ladders, soap, suitcases — not only because they’re familiar and recognisable, but because they carry personal and cultural weight. These materials create a common ground for viewers, allowing them to connect through their own memories and associations. However, I often reconfigure or alter these objects to reflect more intimate layers — feelings, fragments of memory, and emotional ties.  

Over time, I’ve noticed that my works become conversation pieces — viewers share their own stories tied to these objects, and through those interactions, the works transform into relics of shared everydayness. In this way, my visual language becomes a woven archive of collective and individual experiences — constantly evolving and shaped by both maker and audience.  

Your conceptual frameworks delve into the fluidity of the concept of home. How has your understanding of "home" evolved through your work, and how do you convey that complexity in your installations? 

To me, "home" is not a fixed place — it is constantly shifting, both in its meaning and in its boundaries. In earlier works, I tried to give form to the idea of home through stone carvings  — solid shapes that echoed the physical houses I once lived in. But over time, my understanding of home has become more fluid. It has moved away from architecture and geography, and become more like a state of being — an emotional or psychological space.  

In my recent show, "Homesick" at the Sarabande Foundation, I presented a work titled "Soap Tiles," where I laid handmade soap tiles on the floor to trace out a territory of home. During the accompanying performance, I washed the tiles. With each repetition, the tiles slowly dissolved, their edges blurred. What once marked a boundary became indistinct, yet the traces remained — the soapy water, the scent, the residue.  

This process of constructing and deconstructing becomes a metaphor for how home now operates in my life and practice. It’s no longer a noun, but a verb. A home that shifts,  dissolves, reforms. A home that can’t always be seen, but can be felt. In this way, absence becomes a form of presence — highlighting what’s lost, what lingers, and what we continue to carry.  

In your most recent works, ordinary objects and their associated cultural meanings have been central to your artistic practice. Could you share a specific example of a material or object that has taken on transformed meaning through your creative process?  

In my work, A Pear is not a Pair, I revisit a childhood memory tied to the pear. Growing up,  elders in my family would often tell me not to share a pear with someone, as the word for  "pear" (梨 lí) sounds identical to the word for "separation" (离 lí) in Chinese. They believed that sharing a pear could symbolically lead to separation.  

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if I shared too many pears — my family is now scattered across different parts of the world. This thought inspired me to create a pear that cannot be shared. I carved it from stone — a material that is solid, weighty, and nearly impossible to divide. Yet at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge the desire for connection despite distance. So, I added a silver spoon as its stem, visually inviting the idea of sharing while making it physically impossible. 

The piece embodies a paradox — both rejecting and accepting the absurdity of the situation.  It holds the tension between what is longed for and what is lost.  

This work later grew into a long-term project titled One Pear a Year, in which I carve a single stone pear each year as a way of reflecting on the idea of separation. Each sculpture becomes a quiet ritual, a small act of processing what often feels too complex or intangible to articulate in words.  

What can you tell us about your project titled Check-in Luggage? What are the conceptual and technical lines behind this artwork?  

I have a habit of collecting stones from places I pass through. While walking, I rarely look ahead — I often find myself looking down, noticing what lies beneath my steps. In Check-in  Luggage, I gathered these stones from various locations and embedded them in soap,  molding the form into a suitcase that mirrors the standard dimensions of airline check-in luggage.  

The suitcase becomes both a literal container and a metaphor — a container for belongings,  but also for emotional weight. Each stone holds a memory, a piece of time. By molding them together with soap, I wanted to explore how memory, like soap, can shift form — solid, soft,  or dissolving depending on its environment.  

Soap, as a material, introduces fragility and transformation. It allows the possibility that over time, through touch or water, the suitcase will dissolve — releasing the stones, and with them, the burdens or attachments we carry. I see this piece as a future performance, where the soap is gradually washed away, and the act of uncaging the weight becomes a ritual of letting go.  

Can you elaborate on the significance of storytelling in your artistic practice? How do you construct your visual narratives, and what strategies do you employ to guide viewers through your work?  

Storytelling in my practice often takes a fragmented, nonlinear form. I think of each work as a piece of a larger puzzle — some can stand on their own, while others gain meaning only when seen in relation to individual experiences, times, or contexts. I'm constantly collecting these “puzzle pieces” across time and space, drawing from personal memories, cultural references, or quiet observations of everyday life.  

Rather than presenting a single, fixed narrative, I aim to offer fragments — materials, forms,  gestures — that invite viewers to build their own connections. I often describe it as offering pebbles: when someone encounters my work, I hope they pick up a “pebble” — whether it’s the texture of soap, the weight of stone, or even the way light moves across the surface.  These small moments act as entry points.  

I see time not as linear, but as layered and cyclical — so the stories I tell don’t unfold chronologically, but in echoes and overlaps. The visual language becomes a space where viewers can bring their own memories and associations, assembling a narrative that resonates with them personally. In this way, storytelling in my work is both shared and intimate — never complete, but always unfolding.  

One of your recent works, titled Soap Tiles, employs soap as the medium. Could you elaborate on the symbolic significance of this material choice?  

In Soap Tiles, I work with two overlooked everyday materials—soap and the familiar shape of tiles — to explore the fluid and shifting nature of home. The work begins with a question:  Where is home when all the tiles melt? Through both installation and performance, the piece reflects on the construction and deconstruction of boundaries and how our understanding of home is continuously reshaped.  

Soap is an intimate material. It dissolves over time, wears down with touch, and leaves behind traces — scent, foam, residue. For me, it mirrors the way memory behaves: fragile, elusive,  and yet persistent. By casting the tiles in soap, I create a temporary ground, a space that appears solid at first but inevitably fades with each performance. As I wash the tiles during the performance, their form slowly erodes. The borders of the territory blur, and what’s left behind are the subtle traces — the softened edges, the watermarks, the lingering scent.  

The material holds a quiet tension between permanence and impermanence. In this process of building and rebuilding, I began to see “home” not as a fixed location, but as a verb —  something that is done and undone, held together by rituals, gestures, and emotions rather than physical walls. 

How do you navigate the tension between collective and individual experiences of migration in your art? Do you see your work as a reflection of the broader migrant experience or more of a personal narrative?

My work always begins from a personal perspective — drawn from my own memories,  emotions, and experiences of living between places. But I never attempt to speak on behalf of others. Instead, I construct narratives through objects and materials, allowing space for viewers to bring their own stories into the work.  

The objects I use — soap, suitcases, pears, tiles — are familiar enough to evoke shared memories, yet slightly altered to create a moment for absurdity, a sense of strangeness. This tension between recognition and unfamiliarity opens up space for collective reflection.  

I’m less concerned with factual narratives of migration and more with expressing its intangible emotional complexity — the displacement, adaptation, and quiet resilience that often go unseen. In that way, my works function as open-ended invitations. They hold fragments of my story, but they are also vessels for others to find their own echoes.  

Art and artists play various roles in the fabric of contemporary society. How do you see artistic practices advancing sustainability and social consciousness?  

I believe artistic practices have the potential to foster deep reflection — not just through what they present, but through how they are made and shared. For me, sustainability isn’t only about material choices, though that is important. It’s also about how we sustain attention, care, and relationships — with objects, with people, and with the stories we inherit or pass on.  

In my own practice, I tend to work with often overlooked materials like soap, used cutlery, or found domestic items. These materials carry a history, and reworking them becomes a way to extend their life and value. I also work slowly and often repeat forms across years —like the One  Pear a Year project — which allows me to return to the same questions without rushing to find answers.  

Art can also create space for conversations that might not otherwise happen. I’ve found that through engaging with themes like migration or memory, viewers often share their own stories. That mutual exchange — where art becomes a catalyst for dialogue — is where I see social consciousness taking root.  

What message or call to action would you like to share with our readers?  

I would like to invite readers to pay closer attention to the ordinary and mundane. The things we often overlook — objects on our shelves, rituals we repeat without thinking, the language we inherit — can carry profound meaning.

In a world that moves quickly and values productivity, I think there’s quiet power in slowness,  in noticing, and in allowing space for ambiguity or contradiction. Whether through making or simply witnessing, I believe there is value in holding space for what is unresolved or tender.  

So perhaps my call to action is a gentle one: be curious about the everyday. Listen closely to your own memories and those of others. And allow space for things to not always make sense right away.

Learn more about the artist here.

Cover image:

One pear a year project by Yijia Wu

Images courtesy of Yijia Wu.