In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviews Xingyu Huang’s video Beneath Breathing, featuring footage collected from the Chicago River.
Xingyu Huang
One challenge of the environmental movement has been the difficulty of convincing people of the need to protect that which they cannot easily see. A fragile ecosystem might be too far away, the quality of air and water utterly microscopic, the worst effects of a major pollutant so many years off. Enter artists, masters of making the invisible visible, among them Xingyu Huang. Over the past few years, Huang has availed herself of research done by ecologists, biologists, and psychologists, interpreting it via an array of technical and sculptural tools. Lately she has immersed herself in underwater video footage collected along the Wild Mile, an artificial floating garden docked along a section of the Chicago River, helping to improve water quality and provide a habitat for native wildlife. The garden also features a boardwalk for humans, from which one could recently watch Beneath Breathing, Huang’s mysterious and beautiful ode to local subaqueous life. Projected against the metal wall of an industrial shed on the far bank and doubled by its bright, wavy reflection on the water surface below, Beneath Breathing shows aquatic plants swaying in phosphorescent colors, curious fish swimming by, and more. Some of it is hard to identify—it’s another world down there, but one that is intimately connected to and dependent on ours.
—Lori Waxman 2025-08-06 3:22 PM
Xingyu Huang
xingyuhuang.com
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