‘Oil & Fire’ by Huiyi Xiao

'Oil & Fire' brings together two works that address the migrant experience of “down-skilling”—the systemic devaluation of an individual’s skills, experience and labour through emigration. Set within the contained space of the studio, Down to Oil is composed of a series of performative gestures accumulating in intense affective forces, exposing the psychological toll of constraint and devaluation.

Please join us to celebrate the opening of this exhibition at First Site Gallery, 5– 7pm, Wednesday 8 April. ⁠

Huiyi Xiao is a Chinese-Australian artist whose practice spans performance-based video, installation and photography to conduct a somatic inquiry into the diasporic condition. As a first-generation migrant, she investigates how cultural and political forces are internalised, resisted and rewritten within the body. Employing an auto-ethnographic methodology, she transforms lived experience into constellations of metaphorical body-installations and performances. The artist positions her own body as a living archive, extending its narratives through the use of found objects and resonant sites that signify external social realities.

Xiao holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from RMIT University in 2025 and was the recipient of the Dean's Award for Academic Excellence, the Associate Dean Award for Photo Innovation, the Travel Scholarship, and the Art for Social Change Award. She was also a finalist in the Castlemaine Art Museum Experimental Print Prize in 2025.

Image: Huiyi Xiao, 'The Fire that Wouldn't Call Itself Ash' (video still), 2025. Image courtesy of the artist.

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