Xieni Zhou is a Chinese visual artist currently living in London. She graduated from Sichuan University with a Bachelor's Degree, and then received her MA Fine Art and MA Illustration degrees from Camberwell College of Art and Royal College of Art, respectively.
Curiosity begins with the cyclical phenomenon of decay and regeneration in nature, Xieni aims to capture the fragile and transitional details of natural world as visible traces. The
focus is on time-based drawing practices, investigating how people perceive time through environmental changes and how these sensory variations evoke a sense of the value of
being in a place. By examining the perspectives of our ecological identity, Xieni hopes to understand and reflect on how humans relate to nature in society today.

''How can we perceive a contemporary soil portrait in the suspended moment?
I bowed my head, the soil was covered and squeezed downwards by a shell of artificial stone. The surface beneath my feet cuts the environment in halves, and my perception is
enclosed by the dominance of my sight. This disdainful gesture leads to the arrogant illusion that the soil is a dark, dull, and dirty ‘substance'.
Soil certainly has enormous vitality. They grew in the urban cracks, becoming a closed, complete but broken form, and then suffered continuous repairs and reconstruction. This
micro landscape structured as a hybrid that reflects the endless entanglement and transformation of nature and culture.
I try to understand this ever-changing movement through my drawing practice. By using perspective lines to generate an organized rhythm—the lines intersect and form the shape
of tiles. Patterns of soil then filled the paper, growing along the scaffolding-like draft lines.
Finally, I kept the draft and intentionally left the artwork unfinished. By keeping gazing and retracing these soil ghosts, I hope to test whether they can evoke the reflection and
inspiration on our ecological identity and the future relationship of soil-body.''