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Michelle Chang Qin (1996) grew up in a workers’ commune in China, where life and work fully converged. She felt at home amid the workers’ clutter and mess: a cigarette stubbed out on a pile of aluminium scrap, or a carton of milk wrapped in a greasy cloth. Random remnants and unconscious compositions emerge as undeniable traces of human labour.
In her work, Qin recalls such places and labour processes. Her installations resemble enigmatic constellations composed of partly recognizable elements. She often works with found materials that already carry a history and thus suggest a possible function. Yet when the viewer attempts to pin this down, their interpretation falters, as certain details seem to point towards other, competing contexts. In this way, her work eludes the language, logic and efficiency that are characteristic of the labour processes to which she refers. As Qin explains: ‘Sourced from makeshift structures and temporary facilities commonly found on sites of production, my work imagines a perpetual in-betweenness, echoing the unfinished thoughts and wandering avatars of someone engaged in monotonous tasks.’
In It Had Rained All Night (2025), Qin brings together different layers, each evoking its own set of associations: from a rubber mat that may once have been used in the cab of a lorry to steel braces from reinforced concrete, fishing lures and washing lines reminiscent of small rope ladders or railway tracks. The work conjures associations with urban structures, sites of transit, domestic actions and forms of cheap labour.
Witten by: Esther Darley