At the midway point of her residency at Surface, Xin Chen sat down to talk about her work’s playfulness and imagination as well as her experience running her experimental workshop, House of Ink.

How does this residency compare to your typical ways of working?

At first, I was a bit nervous about meeting new people and how I would fit in. But it’s actually really great. I feel very comfortable there because I was wondering how I was going to work with so many people around. But it’s actually quite nice seeing people focusing on their own work and it’s interesting seeing the process of each artist. During uni, we had our own studios and spaces together but because I did ceramics with only one other student it was just us working in the workshop. We were isolated from the others and I only saw how people make ceramics and I couldn’t see how other people made other kinds of works!

That’s so true and I guess you have the gift in the Project Space at Surface to see someone working with textiles in the corner, someone painting in the other. It’s a total mix. So what is it you’re making in the Project Space right now?

There are two paintings I’m doing at Surface. Like I said, it’s always about solving a puzzle for me. The two canvases I’m working I found, I didn’t buy them. I love making things with what I have around me and I don’t like to search for things too hard. But because it’s canvas, people will assume that, ‘Oh, you want to paint this, so you bought this canvas,’ but for me, this canvas was left in my studio.

So that’s the story? You found the canvas abandoned in your studio!

Yes! When we had our studios in the basement at Backlit [during Chen’s MFA course], someone must have left those two canvases there, so I just swiped them.

That adds such an interesting extra layer to your work. It feels like there’s an extended history to what you have made.

Exactly, even the paints are acrylics I’ve been given. I think that’s my way of being more sustainable. People talk about the textures too on the paintings but that’s actually from the previous user. I think for those two paintings, what I wanted to paint was an observation of the neighbourhood around Surface Gallery. I always do observations a lot but since I was in that space I wanted to connect more to that specific space.

And what story is that space telling? What’s your viewpoint for the work?

I’m not looking at the histories or the stories on the street but I look more at the formal language like, ‘This house has a unique shape to me,’ things like that. I also put some things in from my own imagination too to add them together. I’ve been calling it an imaginary landscape. It’s not real but you can see it’s a British house, though nothing is very clear. It feels quite familiar and strange. That’s the story I want to create. It’s about reality and imagination together…

…I think it all goes back to my childhood. I really enjoyed exploring my neighbourhood which was like a compound with lots of houses and buildings in a hilly landscape. I enjoyed looking at the variety of the architecture and landscape. That’s why I want to look back to. For my ceramics and for this work, that’s the one thing that connects them all together.

It sounds like your world-building, it’s like a world you once knew and a world in your head.

Yes, it’s like an imaginative world I can really explore because in my process, even I, as the artist, don’t know what the world is going to be like. I also explore it as a viewer.

“Making a piece, for me, is like solving a puzzle: it’s about how to make this lump of clay into something that’s beautiful and playful. ”

What sort of media were you working in at NTU and has that changed since leaving?

It’s changed a lot. I started with ceramic workshop, so I’ve been doing ceramics for the past two years. Before that, I did illustration mostly on paper.

How can you see those two practices being connected?

I’d say they are naturally intertwined. My illustration previously had an approach kind of like collage and, at first, what I was doing was very similar to what I’m doing right now [during the residency] with my paintings. I realised that I didn’t have to draw figurative things and I could just do collage with shapes and colours. I did that before I came here [to Nottingham to study at NTU] and collage and then I found ceramics. All I did was shift what I was doing with collage to ceramics, so that shift was natural.

How do you approach a new ceramics project? I know some people start off in a sketchpad or they see a lump of clay and they just go for it.

I’m the last one (laughs). I always go with my intuitions, that’s why I found doing my degree so difficult. Speaking to people about my work and what it’s about was so hard. Obviously, making a work for me is like solving a puzzle; it’s how to make this lump of clay into something that is, to me, beautiful and playful. I enjoy the process and I enjoy the process of making. I don’t have a plan or sketch. I also like it when it turns out to be so random and so unexpected.

Chen’s workshop, *House of Ink,* in action.

How did you find running your workshop, House of Ink?

I didn’t want to deliver a workshop where I teach people how to make art. I think everyone knows how to draw so I planned it in a different way than the ones I’ve run in the past. I’ve done one in the National Justice Museum with clay where I showed people how to work with clay. This one was less like a teaching session and more like an experiment. I came up with prompts to get people together and draw different themes as an expansion of the topic of houses. I think it was really fun. We talked about the different stories behind each drawing. I didn’t talk much, I let people talk.

What were the prompts?

I divided it into sessions and gave four prompts, one for every ten minutes. [The prompts were] dream house, houses with no humans, houses that move and houses of your childhood. This was the second session. The first session was about getting used to the materials and drawing houses with shapes and dots.

Of course, ‘the house’ is a huge motif for your work right now. What does ‘house’ mean to you compared to ‘home’?

During our crit with Yelena [Popova] she also mentioned this; houses as ‘home’. But when I do this, this is not really what I’m looking at. I’ve been looking at the shape and the architecture more than the more home side of the story. I think I understand that when people look at it they may think of home. I used to call it ‘figurative abstract’ so I look at it all in the abstract sense. I find it quite interesting because people would connect them together and create their own story around it. For me, I don’t really work from that narrative.

What are your favourite creative spaces in Nottingham?

I have a lot of connections with Backlit. We had our studio spaces there [during Chen’s MFA course] and I also did my placement there. They are very supportive there. Also, there’s Surface which is so different as it’s all run by volunteers. I find it incredible I can’t imagine how it all works because no one is getting paid and it’s still going strong. It’s so free. I did another exhibition there earlier this year [NTU Arts Festival 2025] and when we were installing our work, no one was saying, ‘Oh no, you can’t do this and you can’t do that!’

That’s the fun of Surface as it forgets the very careful gallery culture where everything is serious and proper. It’s less structured since Surface wants to get artists in and do what they want.

Interview by Orla Sprosen.

You can find out more about Xin Chen’s work on Instagram (@xinxinxin_chen) and on her website.

For more insights on the EM25 Graduate Project and to hear more about the latest news at Surface Gallery, head over to our Instagram.