Xinjie Mai
(He/Him)
My practice searches for entrances: into memory, play, material, virtual space, and the unstable sense of self that appears through them.
Working across installation, printmaking, drawing, text, and digital environments, I do not use these media simply to represent a world. Instead, I treat them as conditions through which a world can be approached. An entrance might appear through a framed game screenshot, a chair placed in the room, a hidden print, a vent cover, a stain, or a fragment of material.
Play is central to this search. I understand play not only as a game, but as a state in which time expands and the self becomes momentarily stable. My work attempts to preserve and re-enter this condition. Virtual environments, material traces, and exhibition spaces become different ways of locating the threshold to this state.
The exhibition is therefore not only a display of works, but a partially functioning play structure. Viewers encounter the work through ordinary actions: walking, sitting, turning, looking, and discovering. Some elements are visible immediately, while others remain hidden until the viewer moves through the space differently. In this sense, looking becomes a form of searching.
My work is not about constructing a complete world, but about finding entrances into worlds that already exist behind ordinary experience.
