Artist Xiaojing Yan shares how her immigration from the East and West, specifically China and North America, influences her practice, and how she weaves her experiences of change and complexity through her work. Xiaojing is participating in Come Up To My Room 2011.

How do you see your CUTMR installation/project fitting in to your larger practice as an artist, architect or designer?

After living in Canada and the United States for several years, I have become increasingly interested in cultural and personal identity and in the need to discover a new mode of artistic and social expression that blends Chinese and Western ways of thinking. In an effort to shape myself, I take traditional Chinese materials and techniques and reinvent them within a Western aesthetic and presentation. CUTMR provides me with a unique opportunity to show my artwork to the diverse public to search for echoes.

How do you see your practice expanding over the next five years?

Moving from China to Canada has been the most significant change in my life. For me, this experience engendered a “new life”, from which I draw strength and richness. Making art is not only meaningful to me but has sustained me. As an immigrant in North America, I know that the adaptation of these two cultures will be a life-long journey. With art, I will continue solidify my experiential and complex reactions to this challenge.

Why do you think about the rise and interest in multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary practices?

Interdisciplinary finds a new approach for artists by encouraging and inviting us to expand our horizons and thought processes beyond singular disciplines. This also has opened up countless opportunities for art to expand into the new spaces that are created from the interaction of different disciplines. Art is a meaning-making process. As artists who are going to translate our deeply felt knowledge into art, we must keep our minds alive and continually expand our capacities.