Xin Liu, EXHAUST

K11 Art Foundation Prize winner Xin Liu’s Italian Debut at Fondazione Sandretto Re
Rebaudengo
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
April 15 – October 11, 2026
Opening: April 15, 7pm

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, in collaboration with K11 Art Foundation Hong Kong, presents EXHAUST, the first solo exhibition in Italy by London-based Chinese artist Xin Liu, with curatorial direction by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Liu's practice examines the aftermath of technological and scientific aspiration – the debris and residue that accumulates at sites of progress. As a byproduct of industry, exhaust is re-examined as generative, explored in research projects that span the frontiers of genetics and cryogenics, satellite imagery and space research, along with bioplastic engineering and the Anthropocene. Taken together, Liu’s works form a constellation of metabolic worlds – a research trajectory she calls Cosmic Metabolism.
Bringing together a selection of new and recent works, EXHAUST traces how human aspiration mutates and decays, contributing to material lifecycles both microscopic and astronomic. Three key works ground this study: The White Stone (2021), The Map: Karamay (2026), and The Lab (2026). In total, the exhibition maps the transformation of interplanetary and terrestrial landscapes, studying monumentality, degradation and the accelerating production of
exhaust at various scientific frontiers.
The White Stone is a twenty-minute future history film, following a narrator’s search across barren deserts and remote villages for rocket debris, called ‘white stones’. Filmed in 2021 across four provinces in western China, Liu led a recovery mission that paralleled the film’s protagonist, documenting vast, uninhabited landscapes and tracking fallen rocket debris before government officials could retrieve and remove it. Weaving together sound, performance,
narrative reconstruction and site-responsive research, the film invites audiences to examine the life span of
technologies from aspiration to obsolescence, revealing histories and geographies of extraction and disappearance.
Growing up in a resource-dependent oil town in Karamay, Xinjiang (克拉瑪依), Liu's sense of home has been shaped by the impermanence of extractive materials. On her research trip for The White Stone, Liu and her crew encountered another oil town in Qinghai, called Leng Hu Zhen (冷湖鎮), in a state of near abandonment. Its desolation mirrored what she understands as the inevitable future of her own hometown. Emerging from this encounter, The Map: Karamay is a large tapestry of woven Vivomer, a bioplastic made from waste biomass, in a stage of degradation. The work’s interwoven lattice meticulously maps Karamay, imagining the future of Liu’s city as a living terrain shaped by degradation, erosion and time.
The Lab functions as the project's working archive: a constellation of research texts, diagrams, field images and
references tracing histories of metabolism and erosion. Work-in-progress maquettes and material tests demonstrate
the unique characteristics of Vivomer, while a display stages a material prototype actively degrading in soil. Across the exhibition, monumentality becomes a question of failure and decay rather than progress and preservation. Liu
reframes exhaust as a generative residue rather than an endpoint, a recycled byproduct in a continuous process of
metabolic transformation.


Xin Liu (b.Xinjiang, China) is the first winner of the inaugural K11 Art Foundation Artist Prize launched in 2024. She is a multidisciplinary artist and engineer, who creates sculptures, digital experiences, and films that feature machinery, genetic material, petroleum, and rocket debris, to explore the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism. Liu has led and successfully launched two International Space Station payloads and one suborbital flight payload onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard system, and flown three parabolic flights. Liu leads creative and culture at Episteme, a new science research institute. She was an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute, a Visiting Fellow at Cornell Tech, and the founding Arts Curator of the Space Exploration Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. Her work has been shown at Shanghai Biennale, Thailand Biennale, M+ Museum, Yuz Museum, MoMA PS1, MAXXI Rome, Sundance Film Festival, Ars Electronica, and Onassis Foundation, Sapporo International Art Festival, among others.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at
LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show
‘World Soup (The Kitchen Show)’ in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. In 2011 Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize, and in 2025 he received the Prix François Morellet. Obrist’s recent publications include 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021), Edouard Glissant: Archipelago (2021), James Lovelock: Ever Gaia (2023) Remember to Dream (2023), Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in The Digital Age (2024) and A Life In Progress (2025) Vivomer by SHELLWORKS
SHELLWORKS , founded in London in 2019, is a biotech materials company developing sustainable, homecompostable, and vegan materials to replace single-use plastics. Their flagship material, Vivomer, is produced by microbes and designed to function just like plastic in use. Vivomer has been engineered to last and designed to disappear. In use it is completely stable and once disposed of, it naturally biodegrades leaving nothing behind. Shellworks offer a truly circular, non-toxic, and biodegradable alternative to traditional plastics. Working with some of the most innovative brands globally, Vivomer has already been scaled to produce millions of packaging products in the cosmetics and personal care industries.

K11 Art Foundation (KAF)
Founded by Dr. Adrian Cheng in 2010, K11 Art Foundation (KAF) is a non-profit organisation in Hong Kong dedicated to fostering the development of Asian contemporary art. Since its inception, its scope has expanded to include supporting the global art ecosystem to champion emerging artists from across Asia, reflecting the diversity and dynamism of the continent's art scene. In 2023, K11 Art Foundation (KAF) International Council was established to empower and support the next generation of Asian artists, to continue establishing partnerships with leading art and cultural institutions around the world to create impactful cross-cultural exchanges and contribute to the expanding global contemporary art discourse. These include the K11 Art Foundation (KAF) Artist Prize and K11 Art Foundation (KAF) Curator Prize, prestigious awards that recognise and honour exceptional Asian artists and Asian art curators; and the K11 Art Foundation (KAF) Salon, a global series of talks which aim at fostering international dialogues on arts and culture.

K11 Art Foundation Artist Prize
The inaugural K11 Artist Prize launched in 2024 is an open call for emerging Asian artists, providing them with a
platform for recognition and advancement in the international art scene. The selected artist will have the opportunity
to participate in an exhibition by the K11 Art Foundation and receive mentorship from esteemed members of the K11
Art Foundation International Council. The prize includes many opportunities, such as international artists residencies, participation in exhibitions and educational initiatives, and networking within the global art community. The open call is open to Asian or ethnic Asian artists, with no age restrictions, and artists from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. Applicants should have been active in the art industry within the past five to ten years.