The Permanent and Insatiable / Xin Liu (CN). Photo: Management Gallery New York

The Permanent and Insatiable

Xin Liu (CN)

Nomination

xinliu.art/the-permanent-and-insatiable

The Permanent and Insatiable is a series of installations exploring the mythic tension in material science: humans create indestructible materials like plastic while engineering organisms to consume them. Each installation features miniature cityscapes made from post-consumer PET plastic, submerged in transparent bioreactors where lab-grown enzymes gradually dissolve them.

The first work, commissioned by Moody Center for the Arts, recreates downtown Houston and Rice University’s campus; the second, Lower Manhattan’s financial district. Within these decaying cities that compress centuries of degradation into weeks, the artist imagines a world of urban excess confronted by microbial appetites, questioning our uncanny desire for immortality and fear of permanence: aren’t we the most insatiable ones? The project builds on MicroPET, a 2018 research initiative to develop a bioreactor for plastic degradation on the International Space Station. Launched in 2022, it enabled autonomous enzymatic reactions in microgravity and was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023. Published in Nature Partner Journal Microgravity, it laid the technical and conceptual foundation for the series.

Credits

Biologist collaborator: Erika Erickson
Model fabricator: Shijia Huang, Thanya Tham
Artist assistant: Jeremy Siyang Chen
Produced by: Xin Liu Studio LTD
With support from: Moody Center for the Arts; Management Gallery;
Backslash Fellowship, Cornell Tech

Biography

Xin Liu (CN) (born in Xinjiang, China) is a multidisciplinary artist and engineer, whose works spans sculptures, digital experiences, and films to explore the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism. Xin is an artist-in-residence at SETI Institute and the founding Arts Curator in the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab. Currently, she is a resident artist at Somerset House and Delfina Foundation. Her work has been shown at Shanghai Biennale, Thailand Biennale, M+ Museum, Yuz Museum, MoMA PS1, MAXXI Rome, Sundance Film Festival, and Ars Electronica.