PRESS and media HIGHLIGHTS An Xiao and her work have been featured extensively in both print and online media, including the Brooklyn Museum online, The New York Times, The Guardian, Art in America, ARTNews and others.
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The New York Times. March 19, 2010.
Art in Review: #class, by Holland Cotter
Can we talk? That seems to be an urgent art world question, partly because of an economic shakedown that sensible people — i.e., the writers of art fair news releases — keep saying is over, or never happened. But New York artists, in need of jobs or apartments or ways to pay their art school loans, are pretty sure that it did happen, and that it isn’t all that over, even if the Armory Show really had an extraspecial year,” writes Holland Cotter in this review of #class, organized by Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida and presented at Winkleman Gallery. He goes on to mention a few of the discussions that caught his eye: “And the writer Joanne McNeil and the artist An Xiao led a panel on the notion that the art world isn’t as racially integrated as it likes to think.”
Art in America. February 16, 2010.
The Art of the Crowd, by Erin Lindholm
In social media, people are primed to create,” said Xiao, citing the abundance of user-made videos posted on YouTube and Facebook users’ tendency to glamorize their profile photos. “People don’t just want to watch or engage, they actually want to create the art. … Social media art turns into crowd-created art,” said Xiao. This notion of crowd-created art-that, at some point, you have to give control to the masses-is one of the through-lines connecting the diverse projects discussed at the panel,” as Erin Lindholm writes.
Trained in philosophy, Ms. Xiao, 25, came to art through photography, writing and an interest in communication that goes back to her childhood, when she wrote letters to her grandmother in the Philippines. The letters, she said, related little moments that add up to a portrait of the writer, the way social networking does now with a series of — as she put it — ‘totally inane things,’” writes Jan Ellen Spiegel in this Sunday arts review of Status Update at Yale/Haskins Laboratories.
The New York Observer. June 15, 2009.
The Deep Meaning of the Facebook Vanity URL, by Gillian Reagan
Out on the town recently, at cocktail parties and gallery openings, artist An Xiao has been hearing her online name, ‘thatwaszen,’ piercing through the din,” writes Gillian Reagan as she discusses Facebook’s decision to make vanity URLs available to all users. “So, last week, Ms. Xiao was interested to hear the news (on Twitter, of course) that Facebook would allow users to choose their own username and create a simplified address—also known as a ‘vanity URL’—that would incorporate personal brands and common online nicknames.”
The Guardian. February 23, 2009.
Art on Twitter: yes, but is it twart?, by Ruth Jamieson
This New York conceptual artist uses Twitter as ‘a scrapbook, a way to capture thoughts and share them’, believing that the 140-character limit enforces ‘a discipline of thought and economy of language that encourages sharp ideas”. She also creates Twitter-based artworks,’ writes Ruth Jamieson, in her list of the “who’s who” of the Twitter art world. An Xiao’s work on Twitter is mentioned alongside that of Yoko Ono, the Brooklyn Museum, the Tate and others.
With Morse code, since it was so expensive and it was so new, all you could really send were important messages. But with Twitter, what’s really interesting is that you’re sending updates about what you’re eating for breakfast or how tired you are or that you don’t have any coffee. I’m really fascinated at that connection.” In this video interview with the Brooklyn Museum, An Xiao discusses the concepts behind her work as a feature artist for the 1stfans Twitter Art Feed.
In this exhibition An Xiao’s selected works concentrate on Brooklyn. She picked Brooklyn because of the changes in recent years in that area. In the past people thought of crime and drugs when Brooklyn was mentioned. All of that has changed with the influx of many young professionals into many areas - especially Coney Island.” Reporter Tony Peng interviews An Xiao about her work in Gallery Satori’s “The Smalls” exhibition (in Chinese).