Kelly Xi


Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Art and Technology Studies

Material ecology-minded artist and writer Kelly Xi engages intimately with the emissive materiality of digitization. Her research interests wade the petro-porous condition we share with more-than-human life and culture an embodied stake in mutual survival via the gut, “waste”, and wavelength.

Kelly Xi is a transplant of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, the world’s largest supplier of rare earth metals powering illuminant technologies, screens, mobile electronics, turbines, and electric engines. Her hometown is the site of the Baogang Tailings Dam, a radioactive cesspool visible from space, operated by the Bayan Obo mine. In 2021, her biodesign work on the mycelial biopolymer PermaPak won the Barilla Prize for Regenerative Living Ecosystems and was published in Issues of Science and Technology. She has exhibited at MdW Fair, The Wrong Biennale, and Selenas Mountain.