Cheng Xie London, United Kingdom

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I am a visual artist and designer exploring the emotional tensions between care, collapse, and communication. My work moves between video, text, and material forms, often grounded in digital aesthetics and dystopian narratives to examine the psychological impact of life in hyperconnected systems.

My artistic practice explores the emotional, structural, and ethical pressures embedded in contemporary systems—especially within language, care, and design. I work across video, text, material installation, and experimental graphic forms to examine how emotional labor, overstimulation, and digital saturation affect not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to ourselves.

I am particularly drawn to moments of friction: when empathy becomes unsustainable, when communication collapses, when systems designed for connection begin to overwhelm. These are not breakdowns to be solved—they are conditions to be observed, held, and worked with. I use formal constraints, fragile materials, and saturated or fragmented visual strategies to reflect this tension.

What makes my work distinct is that I take emotions seriously—not as something personal or private, but as part of how we live and work today. I pay attention to states like fatigue, confusion, or distance, and see them not as problems to fix, but as signs that something needs to change.

My practice invites slowness and reflection. It asks how we can stay present without being consumed, and how we might make space—for uncertainty, for distance, and for more sustainable ways of feeling and thinking.