Exhaust

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Mixed media
Installation

A large, floor-spilling tapestry maps the artist’s hometown of Xinjiang as a living terrain shaped by metabolism, erosion, and time. Presented in a partially post-degraded yet fully cleaned state, it preserves the trace of decay without allowing further change.

Growing up in a resource-dependent oil town, Liu’s sense of home and city has been continually shaped by the impermanence of the materials on which the city depends. During the trip in search of rocket debris, Liu and her crew encountered another oil town in Qinghai, called Leng Hu Zhen (冷湖镇), in a state of near abandonment. Its desolation mirrored what she understands as the inevitable future of her own hometown.

The technical room of the gallery is staged as a lab space, functioning as the project’s working archive: a constellation of research texts, diagrams, field images, and references tracing the tapestry’s conceptual roots in metabolism, erosion, and monumentality. Work-in-progress maquettes and material tests reveal decisions around weaving experiments with the characteristics of the Vivomer material. At the center, a sealed transparent display stages a material prototype degrading in soil, in real time. Together, these materials shift the attention from the exhibited work towards a continuous inquiry with decay and temporality.

The work is made using Vivomer, a bioplastic made from waste biomass by Shellworks.

The Map: Karamay

2026
Weaved and post-degraded Vivomer sheets, threads, bondina, polyester, cotton
6000 x 2140mm

The Lab

2026
Weaved and degraded Vivomer samples, polaroids, sketches, printed documentation and articles.

Before and After Degradation

Documentation of before and after degradation of the map.

Credits

Project Management: Sórcha Bradford
Creative R&D: Shijia Huang
Fabrication: Maggie Bradford, King Clarin, Chris Istance, Barbie Kim, Kirsty Liang,
Yingtong Lin, Ellie McKnight, Adina Seitkazina, Yerkezhan Seiitkazina