Huiyi Xiao: Oil and Fire

Huiyi Xiao’s performative videos explore the psychological and political tensions embedded in her lived experience as a member of the Chinese-Australian diaspora. Using her own body as a living archive, she translates personal memory and social critique into a visceral, poetic language.

Oil and Fire brings together two works that address the migrant experience of 'down-skilling' – the systemic devaluation of an individual’s skills, experience and labour through emigration. Set within the contained space of the studio, Down to Oil is composed of a series of performative gestures accumulating in intense affective forces, exposing the psychological toll of constraint and devaluation.