Artforum | Hu Yinping: You Can Start Anytime
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By Yao Pinhui
At her solo exhibition “You Can Start Anytime” at UCCA Dune, Hu Yinping presented the latest works from her ongoing Xiaofang project. Compared with her 2022 solo show “Hu Xiaofang and Qiao Xiaohuan” at Ming Contemporary Art Museum—where Xiaofang served as a reflection of Chinese society post-2010—this new exhibition adds layers of imagination about the future. Spanning ten galleries, the show explores diverse themes such as consciousness/memory, culture/identity, and food/ technology. Hu invited women participating in the project to both reflect on their own lives and imagine broader worlds based on their lived experiences. One of the key features of this exhibition is the presentation of more than 200 personal CVs from participants, woven into textile works. The weaving techniques used were also made open- source, allowing others to learn and engage. By creating more space for expression and action, Xiaofang attempts to evolve into a more organic form of community. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the project, and the author took the opportunity to speak with the artist about Xiaofang’s development and future. The exhibition will run until October 12. The following is the content of the interview.
“You Can Start Anytime” looks toward the future, but looking back on the past ten years of Xiaofang, it’s been a decade marked by life, aging, illness, and death. The women in the project are now in their 50s to their 80s or 90s— an age range often shadowed by health challenges. In 2022, while filming a documentary in Sichuan, our team visited some of the participants and learned that one of the aunties had passed away. Her memorial portrait was a blurry enlargement cropped from a group photo. In that moment, I felt that her entire life had been too blurry, too indistinct— she had simply disappeared. That feeling was one of reasons I created the aunties’ CVs for this exhibition. They’ve never had CVs before; society has only ever seen them as basic labor. For me, Xiaofang isn’t just an art project that‘s lasted ten years—it is their ten years. So, whenever the “ten-year anniversary” comes up, I feel deeply conflicted.
Xiaofang was originally connected to my mother—the first group of aunties who collaborated on the project were actually her former coworkers at a factory. In the 1990s, these factories in Sichuan were responsible for the initial processing of silk, but they eventually shut down because they couldn’t compete with the coastal industrial chains. I feel that through Xiaofang, I’ve entered into their lives after they were laid off. You could say that Xiaofang has grown out of real-life circumstances. Over the years, aunties from other places—Shandong, Suzhou, Hebei, and Beijing—have gradually joined as well.
The self-organization of Xiaofang actually came about out of necessity. I couldn’t show my face, and it wasn’t realistic to bring people from Beijing to work in Sichuan long-term, so the ideal solution was for the aunties to manage things themselves. But that was incredibly difficult at first. No one trusted anyone—it didn’t work when I tried to choose a team leader, or when they tried to choose one themselves. It was only after our team began working on-site that the current system began to take shape. Today, we have two Xiaofang clubhouses and two group leaders in Sichuan. Artists are often idealistic. At first, I imagined the Xiaofang clubhouse not only as a place where the aunties could divide tasks, choose yarn, hand in work, and get paid, but also as a space for them to step outside the home and socialize. But I noticed something interesting. To make the space more comfortable, I bought a fridge and air conditioning, and encouraged them to choose their own furniture. At first, the idea of a massage chair seemed reasonable— until one aunty wanted to get a dragon throne, and I realized I couldn’t meet every individual preference. So after that, all the purchases were standardized. The prices Xiaofang pays the aunties have also evolved. At the beginning, the aunties set their own prices. We accepted whatever they made, regardless of price or quantity. But eventually, we realized that model wasn’t sustainable, so we started having conversations and gradually worked out a more structured pricing system. I believe that only fair pricing can make a local ecosystem more stable and sustainable. If the prices are too far above the market average, the aunties will find it difficult to collaborate with others once Xiaofang is gone. Poor management can also lead to corruption, which defeats the purpose of building a symbiotic relationship. I only get involved in pricing when it’s about encouraging initiative. Some aunties prefer doing repetitive, simple tasks. In those cases, I offer better rates to encourage them to take on more complex work.
Originally, I wanted to give the aunties more choices starting from the raw materials. Product lines around the world are actually quite limited, and at one point I even considered leasing cotton fields and getting involved in the dyeing process. But Xiaofang simply wasn’t big enough for that. So starting from the third phase of Xiaofang, called “Sense of Security,” I began encouraging the aunties to ply yarns themselves. This was the most feasible solution I found after weighing the realities. The yarn we use typically requires 16 strands, and when the aunties create their own color combinations, each strand becomes truly one of a kind. Some of them didn’t understand it at first, but after seeing other people’s finished pieces, they realized how different it really was. That sparked their sense of initiative—which, for me, is essential.
I’ve always hoped Xiaofang could become a stranger, more unconventional kind of community—one that includes artists, aunties, the studio, the market, and institutions. It’s not a vacuum. The aunties have their own professions, and the work of my studio staff can’t be excluded either. In the 2022 solo exhibition at Ming Contemporary Art Museum, I created a fictional figure named Qiao Xiaohuan as an independent presence, like a behind-the-scenes supporter of Xiaofang. But this time, I brought Qiao Xiaohuan’s sculptures into the exhibition, along with the individual skills of the aunties. For instance, most of the lighting and electronics in the show were done by an aunty who works as an electrician. I wanted to incorporate everything we could possibly use to build something more powerful—not just a handicraft knitting project. This idea of integrating diverse inputs led directly to the way we built the large installation in this exhibition. The large installation in this exhibition was created after we received textiles from aunties across different regions. Our studio, together with the aunties in Beijing, assembled and composed the final piece. I hope that in the future, they can pass on that experience to others. This way, from yarn blending to the finished product, the aunties can gradually take part in more stages of the process. There are parts that involve collective work, and parts that are deeply individual, but I want to integrate all of these expressions into a larger structure. I don’t see it as a binary system—it’s not an either- or.
What is the ideal Xiaofang community? Honestly, I don’t have a clear answer. I’ve always been thinking about how to keep Xiaofang going in a healthy, sustainable way. This so- called “community” isn’t something we just imagined out of thin air—it’s something that has gradually taken shape through practice. It’s not about me giving orders and the aunties following them, but about something that forms through our ongoing interactions. There’s also the question of disruption—such as breaking the gaze directed at a particular group, and the issue of class perception. Often, when people look at the aunties as a group, that gaze carries a class perspective—a top-down viewpoint. And that kind of perspective is hard to avoid because it’s embedded in the structure of society. But if we can bring in a wider range of participants—artists, designers, architects, people from museums, people from brands—then the community becomes more complex. And when that happens, its functions and possibilities grow richer.
I don’t want Xiaofang to become something marked by a politicized aesthetic stance. I’d rather it be grounded in realism—working with people from different social classes and backgrounds, and finding practical solutions through the details. It’s not about holding on to some grand ideal of overthrowing anything, but about making gradual progress in the real world. That, to me, is the essence of Xiaofang. I hope all participants can engage without a sense of hierarchy. You could be wealthy, the mother of a celebrity, a person with a top military rank, or someone who cleans for a living. To me, these identities carry no distinction. I’m not trying to erase those identities—I’m trying to flatten the perspective.
The fact that each of our CVs is essentially the same at its core reflects Xiaofang ‘s attempt to represent more layers of the real world. To me, the museum is a very important part of that, but Xiaofang doesn’t have to stop there. That’s why I chose to do this exhibition in a place far from the center— far from Beijing. Xiaofang remains a work-in-progress—a community still in formation.
