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Xinhang Elsa Wei (b.2001)
is an artist from Xiamen, China. Currently base in London and Vancouver. Rooted in Hokkien culture and maritime traditions, her practice explores migration, code-switching, and language as embodied and structural processes, considering how linguistic adaptation reshapes bodily habits and perception. Drawing from her experience moving between China, Singapore, Canada, and now the UK, she works through questions of unreadability, tuning, and continual adjustment as modes of articulation. She is interested in cultural translation, non-dominant language systems, and the relationship between bodily labour and communication. She is currently developing research that connects artistic practice with intercultural learning and language negotiation.
Xinhang, in Chinese, means a sailing at the first light of dawn.
“... It feels like the fishbone trying to stand vertically”
Mixed Media Intallation
180cm x 140cm x 10cm
2026
This installation explores the invisible labour of language adaptation in migration. Fish bones are arranged into marks like fragments of writing and into a suspended structure. Drawing from the repetitive processes of cleaning, sorting, and stitching fish bones, the work reflects the ongoing adjustments involved in code-switching and linguistic reorientation. The suspended form suggests a ghostly space of belonging continuously rebuilt through language.
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The Other Side of the Wor(l)d
Mixed Media Intallation
180cm x 140cm x 10cm
2026
This work is the footnote (the back) of “...it feels like the fishbone trying to stand vertically”.
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“妈祖同意了”办事处
‘Mazu Says YES’ Agency
Nomadic Office.
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Ongoing Performance
First established on May 2026
Mazu Says Yes Agency begins with a visa application and a question asked to Mazu, the sea goddess of my hometown: will I be allowed to go? Between bureaucratic permission and spiritual affirmation, this work is an ongoing nomadic project reflects on migration, uncertainty, and the emotional weight of waiting for approval. Through traces of divination and personal documentation, it considers how belief becomes a way to endure the instability of borders.
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Fish Diary Series
Ongoing Record
2026
This work arranges fish bones into an unreadable text. Emerging through the repetitive acts of cleaning, sorting, and assembling fish bones, the marks occupy a space between writing and drawing, communication and silence. The work reflects on language as something that can be carried, fragmented, and reconstructed.
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GuZheng, 骨正
Mixed Media Installation
2025
This work reconfigures the guzheng as a site of continual adjustment rather than fixed harmony. By repeatedly shifting the movable bridges without standard tuning, the instrument becomes unstable, producing fragmented and unresolved sounds. These gestures show the experience of code-switching, where language is constantly recalibrated across contexts. The bridges, act as the bone of guzheng, are similar to language as the bone of a culture. The red trace left during shiting the bridge position reflects the labor of tuning itself, representing the tension between cultural alignment, miscommunication, and the ongoing negotiation of identity.
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Me-eat
Stop-motion Video
2025
This stop-motion video explores identity, cultural expectation, and the body through everyday family dining rituals. Referencing the pressure on women to overeat to avoid waste, the work examines how inherited habits create discomfort, blurring choice and compliance, and questioning how identity is shaped between cultural conditioning and personal agency.
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Updated 26-06-26