Fabric of memory: artists turn used clothes and thread into monumental art

"These clothes are not 'secondhand'," says Yin Xiuzhen, the Beijing-born artist who builds large-scale installations from found garments and keepsakes. "I prefer to call them 'used' or 'worn'. Clothes that have been 'worn' carry a lot of information … like a second skin, imprinted with social meaning." Some of Yin’s works use her own clothes to tell personal stories; others gather donated items, stained and stretched across towering steel frames into shapes that evoke planes, trains or organic forms.

A selection of these pieces fills the lower floor of the Hayward Gallery in Heart to Heart. On the gallery's second floor, Berlin-based Chiharu Shiota presents Threads of Life, weaving thread through suitcases, keys and letters to create web-like installations.

yin xiuzhen, chiharu shiota, hayward gallery, used clothes, found garments, installations, suitcases, thread, keepsakes, beijing