Echo Morgan, born Xie Rong in Chengdu, China, is a multidisciplinary artist whose deeply personal performances and visual works explore themes of identity, heritage, and feminist resistance. Growing up in a rapidly modernising Chengdu, she was shaped by both the traditions of her family-rooted in generations of scholars, doctors, and musicians-and the shifting cultural landscape around her. Her artistic journey began at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute before leading her to Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London, where she fully embraced performance as a medium of storytelling and self-exploration.

Through materials as intimate as ink, lipstick, and even breast milk, she transforms personal histories into powerful commentaries on body politics, gender expectations, and the intersection of East and West. Her work often reclaims Chinese cultural symbols through a feminist lens, confronting patriarchal narratives and challenging the perception of the female body as passive or ornamental. Whether inscribing calligraphy onto her own skin or engaging in ritualistic acts of endurance, Echo Morgan’s art is both a deeply personal expression and a radical statement on female agency.

In this conversation with CNTRFLD.ART, Echo Morgan reflects on her creative evolution, the influence of her Chinese heritage, and the feminist narratives that shape her work.

CNTRFLD. Upbringing and Heritage

How did growing up in Chengdu and attending the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute influence your artistic perspective and the themes you explore in your work?

EM. “I grew up with mum, she was my mum, my dad, my rock. “This was a sentence from my autobiography, and it appeared many times in my performances. My relationship with my family is the roots of my artwork. Our home was in the busiest city centre, surrounded by newly built 30 floor high rises, the optimistic desires for modernism distended me. I prefer the old China, the old ChengDu. This all makes me a sensitive and nostalgia little girl. But to make my mum proud I was always a monitor. Sichuan Art Institute was changing point in my life, at age of 15. It was the first time I lived in a different city.

The Chinese art institute was welcome to new ideas and ways of expression. This is where I watched The Wall, a music film by Pink Floyd, and “Dance in Dark “by Lars Von Trier. Inspired so much by the cinematic storytelling, I directed my first play “The Pram”. Sadly, all the excitement of contemporary art could only be explored after heavy schoolwork and political lessons, hidden inside piles of sketchbooks. Like many Chinese people, our family endured long historical and social changes.

My heritage was from three grandfathers’ life stories. One was a translator, one was a Chinese medicine doctor, one was a Guqin musician, and my uncle, a newspaper director. But it was the struggles of the women in my family that became my true inspiration-their silence, strength, and survival formed the core of my work.

CNTRFLD. Artistic Journey 

What inspired you to choose a life as an artist, and how did your time at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art shape your artistic practice? 

EM. Education was always my mother’s priority. After her divorce in 1987, she decided to send me to a boarding communist school. I was only four years old. As an army-trained nurse, she believed that strict discipline would help me grow away from my gangster father’s chaotic lifestyle and allow her to focus on her work as an accountant. I was a quiet child, often lost in thought, staring into space.

Drawing became my escape, the one thing that held my isolating personality together. When I was first introduced to still life drawing, I was completely absorbed in the universe of shadows and light, shapes and forms. Chinese art education was deeply rooted in Russian realism, and this rigorous academic training fascinated me. My first art teachers were a professor couple from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute-one specialized in printmaking, the other in oil painting. Their love and passion for life and art still move me to this day.

Central Saint Martins had been a dream ever since I first heard about it in China. But my family never had money, so after my first year of studying for my BA, I had to get married. It wasn’t a sacrifice-I was happy, life felt light and full of possibility. I worked for five years as a window dresser and fashion illustrator, but something was missing. My once sincere soul felt lost in the world of colourful costumes and glamorous club nights. I began to long for my younger self-the one who believed art could change the world. Returning to CSM and applying for the Royal College of Art cost me my marriage. After seven years together, we realized we had grown apart. This separation unfolded alongside my father’s final chapter in life, making my two years at the RCA a parallel journey of recovery-both personal and artistic. It was there, in the midst of grief and reinvention, that I fully embraced performance art. I am deeply grateful to those two institutions, especially a few remarkable tutors who gave me trust, encouragement, and care when I needed it most.

It’s important to highlight that I have a very supportive family now. I met my husband, Jamie Baker, two weeks after my separation from my first marriage, and I’m so grateful that he documented both my heartbreak and my journey of rebirth. Performing as a mother was also challenging , but as a family, we navigated it together-trying to perform while pregnant, breastfeeding, and balancing it all. Now, our sons are 8 and 10 years old, and in my latest video Collapsing Home from Málaga, the footage merges both professional recordings and our boy’s video work.  I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by love and care-it has shaped a unique path for me to continue my journey.

CNTRFLD. Medium of Expression 

Your work incorporates diverse materials like Chinese ink, lipstick, and even breast milk. How did you come to select these unconventional mediums, and what do they signify in your artistic narrative? 

EM. My work is rooted in Action Art, where the artist’s body is the center of the work. The Fluxus movement is also important to me-art that refuses to settle, art as a social healing force. Every material I use is directly tied to my life at that moment.

Ink has been the constant thread, connecting all points. The smell takes me back to my grandfather’s humble, self-built studio, where he practiced Chinese calligraphy. The fluidity runs like my blood. Red lipstick was used in Little Red Flower, where I revisited my kindergarten years from 4 to 7. I was once a very proud red flower, often representing my year, school, even my city, performing about Communist beliefs. But in 2011, after visiting Russia, I began to question many of my childhood heroes and global consumer culture. So, I covered my entire body with different brands of red lipstick. Same as breast milk-three months after giving birth, my first performance with a mother’s body, my strange, swollen breasts. Many times, decisions are raw and practical. I was breastfeeding. I produced a lot of milk. So that was my fountain, a natural gift, white ink.

CNTRFLD. Identity and Representation 

As a woman of Chinese descent working in the arts, how have your experiences shaped your perspectives on identity and representation in your performances and visual work? 

EM. At Central Saint Martins, I was introduced to Context Studio-it changed my direction completely. To choose a topic for essay research, we were asked to draw a Venn diagram with three circles: skills/education, life experience/important events, and conceptual frameworks. The idea was to find the intersection, the unique center-the core of you.

Identity appeared again and again in my self-discovery. That was when I realized-I wasn’t a designer. My need to express went beyond function or aesthetics. Identity becomes so present, so precious, when you are placed in a different culture, a different race, a different space. Foreignness becomes vivid.

My work started as a survival journey. At first, I wasn’t thinking about representation-I was just trying to exist. But I love art history, I love research, and I became aware that my personal story was resonating with others, becoming encouragement, shaping cultural shifts. That awareness comes with responsibility. Because of education, I feel lucky to be able to make work, to reflect on my experiences, to teach, to share my understanding. I want to use the small platforms I have to amplify struggles that are often voiceless.

CNTRFLD. Cultural Contexts 

Having worked in both China and the UK, how do you view the differences in the support and reception for artists in these two cultural contexts? Why did you ultimately choose London as your base? 

EM. My work is personal, and sometimes I perform naked-this remains a taboo in China, both philosophically and culturally. Last summer, I presented my work in front of my mother for the first time. It was a profound moment when she spoke about her personal struggles and her own sense of rebirth through her love for me.

One of the reasons I left China was the deeply ingrained patriarchal structure of its society. After my talk this summer, a young female curator shared her perspective, saying that the male intellectuals in the room should acknowledge how my work challenges their authority. She described the difficulties of being a young female curator in China, where opportunities are dictated by networks and background, and how a small circle of senior male figures continues to dominate the Chinese art world.

In contrast, I deeply appreciate London’s inclusiveness. I have studied, worked, and built a family here for over 20 years. London is home-a place where many sensitive souls can find freedom and community.

CNTRFLD. Themes in Your Work 

Your pieces often explore complex themes such as body politics, eco-feminism, and Chineseness. Could you share more about the inspiration and process behind one of your works, like I Am A Brush or Be Inside the Vase? 

EM. Both Be the Inside of the Vase and I Am A Brush are deeply personal works that use highly topical Chinese symbols to reveal much deeper personal truths. Created within the same year, they emerged from a profoundly challenging yet transformative period when my life and art became inseparable.

Be the Inside of the Vase was made while my father was dying. It responds to two conflicting statements from my parents-my father’s belief that a woman should be like a vase, beautiful but empty, and my mother’s insistence that I should be the inside of the vase, full of substance. In this performance, I painted my body in the style of blue-and-white porcelain, embodying both fragility and resistance while confronting inherited expectations of femininity.

I Am A Brush was created as I was going through my divorce. Using my hair as a brush dipped in ink, I merged my body with the act of calligraphy, transforming personal grief into creation. It became an act of endurance, resilience, and self- redefinition.

Both works reflect a time of loss and change, where personal and artistic expression became indistinguishable, shaping my practice in ways that continue to resonate today.

CNTRFLD. Collaborative Projects 

Recent collaborations like Nature Echo with Tangram Sound delve into eco-feminism and humanity’s relationship with nature. How do you approach such interdisciplinary collaborations, and what do you hope audiences take away from them? 

EM. Interdisciplinary collaborations like Nature Echo allow me to blend music, performance, and visual art, creating immersive experiences that resonate deeply. As the art director for this project, I crafted the stage using branches from my own apple tree and created a painting using seaweed pigment applied with my hair.

During the performance, I live-painted the musicians’ outfits as they played and designed the lighting display. This approach is deeply rooted in the Fluxus movement, where art refuses to settle, and boundaries between disciplines are blurred.

My process is intuitive and deeply connected to the body. I see my role as both a bridge and a disruptor, using live painting and movement to respond to sound in real time. With Nature Echo, I aimed to challenge the audience’s perception of nature-not as something separate from us, but as an extension of our bodies and emotions.

By physically engaging with the music through ink and movement, I sought to make visible the unseen rhythms of nature and human connection.

Ultimately, I hope these collaborations create a space where people can feel rather than just observe, reminding them that art, like nature, is fluid, unpredictable, and alive.

CNTRFLD. Current Work and Future Plans 

What are you currently working on, and can you share details about any forthcoming projects or performances? 

EM. With Nature Echo, we have several upcoming performances across the UK, including Nottingham on February 5, Manchester on February 20, and York on February 26. For this tour, I hand-crafted seven lanterns, each representing a shape from the Tangram—a collection that bridges traditional Chinese and Western music through cross-media, immersive storytelling. As a Senior Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art, I’m guiding our Fine Art students to explore Off-Site projects, challenging the conventional gallery system and the commercial art market. We’re also celebrating Performativity in contemporary art through seminars and workshops. I have some fantastic guest artists lined up and exciting places to take my students.

In April, I’ll perform a hair painting with my mother in Beijing to mark Hans Christian Andersen’s 200th birthday-an opportunity to reflect on his poetic understanding of water’s adaptability while echoing the struggles of Afghan women’s suppressed freedoms. I want this piece to be both visually enchanting and deeply thought- provoking.

I’m also working on a new commission for the Crow Museum in Texas, which will be my first trip to the US. The museum recently acquired a photograph from Be the Inside of the Vase (2012) along with its film for their permanent collection. Returning to this work and bringing new life into it will be an emotional and significant moment for me.

I am developing an expanded theatre project with director and writer Daniel York Loh, exploring a contemporary, personal, and political adaptation of Mountains and Seas: Songs of Today. Last year, I led a workshop for Kakilang, an organization that promotes Asian and Southeast Asian artists and theatre-makers. We had a wonderful R&D session earlier this year, and we are hopeful about producing the show in London this year.

For the first time, I am exploring AI animation as part of this project. The piece combines spoken word, live percussion, electric guitar, and movement artists, creating an immersive and provocative experience.

CNTRFLD. Reflection on Challenges and Growth 

Your work often addresses personal narratives and societal struggles. How do you balance vulnerability and empowerment in your storytelling? 

EM. Before I left China, my art teacher advised me to always hold a pure heart—to be honest and passionate. That guidance has stayed with me. I was deeply inspired by Hélène Cixous’s theory of écriture féminine, where she encourages women to write about themselves and their histories. My work often begins in a deeply personal space, but I shape that rawness into something larger than myself-something that resonates with collective experiences. The body becomes both a site of memory and a tool for transformation. The work is completed through the audience’s experience and interaction. Many times, people share their own tears and stories, and my personal journey becomes a space of healing for others.

Empowerment comes through action-placing my body in challenging situations, making the invisible seen and inviting audiences to witness and reflect. I believe true strength lies in embracing fragility, allowing it to unfold into something fearless. I do not see myself as brave; I have held grief for years. But within sorrow, I see beauty and strength-the deepest expressions of humanity and care.

CNTRFLD. Advice for Aspiring Artists 

What advice would you give to young artists, especially those navigating complex cultural identities, who wish to pursue a multidisciplinary artistic career? 

EM. Embrace the complexities of your identity-they are your greatest strength. Art is not about fitting into predefined categories but about carving your own path. If you feel torn between cultures, disciplines, or ways of thinking, see this not as a conflict but as a rich, layered perspective that can bring depth to your work.

Stay curious. Experiment across mediums, materials, and ideas. Multidisciplinary practice allows you to explore beyond limitations, to find the language that best expresses your vision. Let your work evolve organically-listen to where it wants to go rather than forcing it into a single form.

Build a community. Art is not created in isolation. Surround yourself with people who challenge and inspire you, who understand the nuances of your journey. Collaboration can open unexpected doors and deepen your understanding of your own practice.

And finally, be resilient. The art world can be unpredictable, and success is never linear. Rejection will come, but so will moments of deep connection and meaning. Keep making, keep questioning, and trust that your voice matters.

About the artist.

Born in 1983, Xie Rong, also known as Echo Morgan, challenges perceptions of “Chineseness” and femininity through provocative action art. Using her body as a living canvas, she creates action paintings and live performances with Chinese ink, red lipstick, coal, chlorophyll, and breast milk, exploring themes of the body politic, ecofeminism, and identity. Her work merges Eastern philosophy with Fluxus and body art, fostering dialogue on beauty, power, and vulnerability.

Trained at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute High School, Central Saint Martins, and the Royal College of Art, she collaborates with photographer Jamie Baker, integrating painting and mark-making onto photographs. Her work is held in public and private collections, including The Staatliche Museum (Berlin), The Crow Museum (Texas), The Ned, Soho House, and Kensington Palace (London). She also creates personal films and collaborates with musicians and movement artists for immersive, site-specific storytelling.

Her accolades include the Aesthetica Art Prize (2014), and the Chinese Arts Now Scratch Award (2019), with a Mother Art Prize shortlist (2022). She has presented her work at leading art institutions across the UK, China, and the USA. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art.

Xie Rong lives in Dorking, Surrey, with her husband Jamie Baker and their sons, Tao and Zen.

CREDITS:

⁠Illustration of Echo Morgan by Maria Chen. Inspired by a photo by Vicki Couchman

ALL WORKS: ©Echo Morgan