Yin Xiuzhen at Hayward Gallery in London: ‘Heart to Heart’ explores art and memory

Now on view at the Hayward Gallery, Yin Xiuzhen’s Heart to Heart runs from February 17th to May 3rd, 2026, offering a powerful meditation on art and memory. This landmark exhibition, the artist’s first major UK survey, brings together over three decades of her work, in which everyday materials become vessels for personal and collective histories.

Art and memory through immersive installations

Spanning the lower level of the gallery, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey through immersive installations, sculptures, photographs and archival works. Yin Xiuzhen is renowned for transforming second-hand clothing, concrete, ceramics, and found objects into poetic environments that reflect on identity in a globalised world. Her pieces encourage visitors to reconsider the familiar and reveal how memory is embedded in the materials that surround us.

At the heart of the exhibition is A Heart to Heart (2025), a monumental textile installation in the shape of a human heart. Made from donated garments, visitors can enter the piece, which symbolises a shared emotional space where individual stories converge to create a collective experience.

Heart to Heart: key works

Highlights include the ongoing Portable Cities series, including Portable City: Shenzhen (2003) and the newly commissioned Portable City: London (2025). These sculptural cityscapes, made from clothing and displayed in open suitcases, offer intimate portraits of urban identity, capturing places through the lived experiences of their inhabitants.

Another notable piece is Collective Subconscious (2007), which features a bisected vehicle connected by a long fabric tunnel made from garments belonging to hundreds of individuals. This installation serves as a metaphor for shared journeys, intertwining memory, movement, and human connection.

Earlier projects, such as Ruined City (1996), reflect on rapid urban transformation. Using cement-coated domestic objects, they evoke the tension between destruction and renewal in modern China.

A dialogue between past and present

Through these works, Yin Xiuzhen constructs a language of art and memory that bridges personal narratives with broader cultural shifts. Heart to Heart ultimately becomes a space of reflection—where material, memory and identity intertwine—inviting audiences into a quiet yet profound dialogue about what it means to belong in an ever-changing world.