Reimagining social infrastructure, interdependence, and collective care through participatory art between China, Rotterdam, and London

In this CNTRFLD.ART In Conversation, artist Yin Aiwen unfolds a practice shaped by migration, critical inquiry, and an ongoing search for alternative ways of living together. Born in China during a period of profound socio-political transition and now based between Rotterdam and London, Yin’s work emerges from the tensions between collectivism and individualism, ideology and lived experience—questions that continue to inform her interdisciplinary approach spanning art, design, research, and institutional strategy.

Her projects—most notably Liquid Dependencies—position care, interdependence, and social infrastructure at the centre of artistic production. Drawing from her diasporic perspective and academic research at Goldsmiths, University of London, Yin reimagines how societies might be organised through systems rooted in consent, mutual support, and distributed agency. Her work resists fixed forms, instead unfolding through games, performances, and participatory frameworks that invite audiences to actively rehearse new social possibilities.

Presented as part of Thresholds of Becoming at esea contemporary in Manchester, Yin’s latest iteration of Liquid Dependencies takes on a localised dimension, engaging directly with questions of race, citizenship, and the global care chain. Within the exhibition’s wider exploration of transformation and “in-between” states, her work proposes speculative yet grounded models for collective life—foregrounding care not as abstraction, but as something to be practiced, negotiated, and continuously reimagined.

Rooted in both personal history and systemic critique, Yin Aiwen’s practice speaks to an urgent contemporary condition: how we might build infrastructures of care in an increasingly fragmented world. This conversation traces the evolution of her thinking—from early intuitions shaped by post-socialist China to her current experiments in participatory systems—offering insight into a body of work that challenges us not only to reflect, but to act, relate, and imagine otherwise.

“Supporting each other to have time to rest and to be kind to ourselves is probably the most urgent activism.”—Yin Aiwen

CNTRFLD. Before your work became so rooted in theory and systems thinking, there was simply you — growing up and figuring out how you see the world. Can you share a bit about your childhood and upbringing, and whether there were early moments that shaped your interest in relationships, care, or how systems work?

YA. It’s funny that I never think of my work has much to do with my upbringing - my projects usually start with a conceptually interesting question, such as what does it mean to have decentralisation on a social level instead of on an infrastructural level - until I realise I kept using stories about my life to explain certain artistic choices. In ReUnion Network, the speculative welfare infrastructure that the role-playing game Liquid Dependencies: what does a decentralised caring society look like? was built upon, people always ask why does this system only offer welfare for one-on-one relationships? Why not a care currency for collectives. I would say because I came from a post-socialist China when individualism is thriving against collectivism, and I want neither of them.

I yearn for a third way for us to live together, where our dignity and agency is protected, but also able to connect and fall back on each other. So, I figure an ensemble of one-on-one, long-term relationships seem to be able to balance stability and distribution of power. Because for each relationship to work, both parties have to consent to it. Then theoretically speaking, everyone in the relationship has a veto power. When a collective body does not rely on the charm of a leader, peer pressure, or a totalising organisational structure, but only made of an ensemble of long-term consensual relationships, then no one’s opinion will be structurally diminished. I guess that was the desire that shaped the project.

CNTRFLD. You move fluidly between artist, designer, researcher, and strategist — roles that don’t always sit neatly together. How did you arrive at this hybrid practice, and what excites you about working across boundaries rather than staying in one lane?

YA. I guess my work brought me to these places. I remain in an intimate relationship with my work: I spent little time strategizing it for my career, rather I always feel like a caretaker for it to be itself. The best design education I got was from an architecture textbook that I randomly got in my teens, it said some famous architects say they don’t ask where the brick should be, they ask the brick where it wanted to be. I guess that’s my approach to my work too. An idea usually came through from an interesting conversation or a strange moment, a question stuck in my head, and it grew into a project as I explored it. And the project will find a place where it wants to sit in, sometimes an exhibition, sometimes a research institution, sometime in a consulting moment. I think because all my work is about different ways to organise life together, I have to rely on many fields of knowledge so that the work can be as good as possible. As a result, it naturally connects to these fields. As for all these hats I am wearing, they are more of a result that I am connecting to a vast field of knowledge which usually reside in highly professionalised spaces. So, I wear these hats, and learn the languages that come with the hats, because I want to connect those I feel a connection to. Not because I deliberately plan a deranged career, ha-ha.

CNTRFLD. Ideas of care, interdependence, and social structures run through so much of your work. How do your personal experiences — including your cultural background and identity — influence the way you think about these themes?

YA. Again, I wasn’t conscious about how my personal background would influence the way I think and work until recently when I had to ask myself about this in my PhD study in Goldsmiths. I realised I was deeply frustrated by parts of the reality I grew up with. China in the 90s was a strange phase. My parents’ generation experienced multiple nation-wide nightmares, each of these nightmares lasting a decade long. And then it was the 80s when the economy started thriving and political freedom was unleashed until another nation-wide shock blew up. Looking back, I think many people became completely cynical about the ideas of Communism and Socialism, even though they still teach these ideas at school.

Meanwhile, I received education that dived deep into the socio-economic critique on Capitalism and why Communism is the horizon of human society. It sounded all solid and promising to me as a child. But everyone I know outside of the textbook, my parents, my classmates, my teachers, none of them believed it privately. Instead, all I heard was that the dark side of human nature will never hold up to a utopia. I find it quite painful that the history we chose to remember (and those social schemas that enabled the history) tells us a life worth living is impossible, and that impossibility comes from us and us alone. Driving by this pain, I guess, I spent my life searching for the dynamics between an ideology, the social structure and the so-called human nature, and trying to see if other dynamics are possible.

CNTRFLD. For Thresholds of Becoming, you’re presenting a localised version of Liquid Dependencies, where participants role-play futures of care. What do you love about creating situations where people actively step into a work, and what kinds of reflections or conversations do you hope this version sparks?

YA. I love to observe how people are engaged with a new infrastructure; it always teaches me a lot. Some people walk in wanting to win the game (although the game doesn’t define success, people have their own idea of winning), some come in only for experience, some come to test their future, some would actively try to dismantle the system, some would try to spot the intellectual references. If anything, the game changes me the most. When I design the system ReUnion Network, I had this conviction that if society is designed for justice and kindness, then people will have a good life together. The role-playing game Liquid Dependencies was just sought to test if this system would work out at all. Surprisingly, it worked, people did change after, even during, the game. But it doesn’t mean we then automatically know how to take care of each other, even if a caring infrastructure was installed.

The most important session for me was one in Beijing. It was a society of extreme wealth gap, the rich are so rich they don’t need to know about the welfare system at all, and the poor ones are so hurt and repressed they fail to connect with anyone else. The game rules didn’t change at all, nor that extreme wealth gap didn’t happen in the game before. But the level of despair profoundly struck me. It made me realise social structure can only do so much. It was people’s belief that another way to live is impossible that created this absolute bleakness. I think after that I become more invested in education (I am also a teacher) and keep on hosting the game because I see the game space offer a place where people can practice a kind imagination for each other. And to experience that possibility is vital for people to believe in hope.

CNTRFLD. Your projects often unfold as games, performances, or evolving systems rather than fixed objects. What draws you to these time-based and participatory forms, and what do they allow you to explore that other mediums might not?

YA. I think time is essential for us to learn, to change, to make connections. Especially regarding care, and all the politics revolving around it, takes time to sink in. The message behind Liquid Dependencies is not very complex. A caring society needs to be backed by a kind infrastructure but ultimately is made by us in every moment when we are willing to let go and be kind to each other. We can all understand this in an intellectual way, but to understand it in a visceral, emotional way, we need time together, and we need a space to practice, to have meaningful feedback, and eventually our bodies start to trust that possibility.

As for games specifically, it has been a very good research and testing tool for me. While games have all the elements and components to recreate a scenario, a collective structure, a mini society, I can design a chain of value for any ideology I want. Like in Liquid Dependencies, we don’t set a winning goal because we want people to define their own success for life. But we do set the points to fail, which is that one cannot survive in a society without the ability to sustain themselves mentally and physically, without connections with others and basic social security. This is the value we want to promote in the game; it is not money but other things in life that make our lives worth living. On the other hand, a game has to be playable and engaging, and it must have enough space to incorporate players’ input. This nature demands humbleness from the artists/designers. It is impossible to design a good game if you are not curious and open to people’s reactions to your structure. And I very much enjoy this continuously unlearning process.   

CNTRFLD. This exhibition marks esea contemporary’s 40th anniversary and takes place during the Lunar Year of the Horse — a moment that feels symbolic and forward-looking. What does it mean to you to be part of this milestone, and do you feel a connection between the show’s themes of transformation and your own practice?

YA. It’s an honour to be invited to contribute and celebrate the milestone of this unique institution. Because esea contemporary is an institution that has a particular cultural focus, I got to explore one strand of considerations that we never have the opportunities to do so in Liquid Dependencies. That is the intersection between racialised experience of care and citizenship. In the development phase of the game back in 2021 in Shanghai, we (Mengyang Zhao, Yiren Zhao and myself) were discussing how care labour is associated with privilege. Namely, the less privileged you are, the more care labour you need to pick up. In different sessions of the game, we get to confront this power asymmetry rendering in men and women, the rich and the poor, working adults and youth/retirees, cis-gendered and transgendered and fully abled and differently disabled. By designing the game content or by inviting people.

But I always hope we can have a bit more discussion around race and citizenship in the game, as these are arguably the most important factors in the Global Care Chain, after gender, class and geopolitics. For most of the institutions that hosted the game previously, they are contemporary art spaces that aim for the general public, which in practice would mean a mainstream population in which race and citizenship get a bit diluted in the conversation. After all, it is a project with very dense topics. So having to work with esea contemporary, I finally get to zoom into this topic with the support of two ESEA-identified researchers. This experience mirrors how I develop my career as well, as a cultural practitioner I tried to position myself as someone who explore more “general” topics like technology, institutions and care. Because I worried about being pinned down as a Chinese artist who talks about China in an early stage of my career. Esea’s invitation came in at the moment when I feel safe to reconnect to my heritage and identity. So, to be able to work on this aspect of the project in the context of the 40th anniversary of the institution really feels like a timely gift to celebrate my personal threshold of becoming. 

CNTRFLD. You’ve lived and worked in different places and institutional environments, and you’re now based in Rotterdam. What led you to settle there, and how have the different support systems you’ve encountered shaped your perspective as an artist?

I actually live between Rotterdam and London now, because of my PhD scholarship in Goldsmiths. I moved to the Netherlands 15 years ago for my master’s degree in Amsterdam and stayed there for 7 years until the housing market got too expensive for a young immigrant artist. So, I moved to Rotterdam, a city that is more affordable and still has a vibrant design/architecture/art/culture environment. Rotterdam remains small as a city, unlike Amsterdam, let alone London. I can afford to live in the super centre of the city, 10 minutes’ walk and I can reach everything, without all the typical hazards of living in a metropolis. It just brings me a lot of peace and remains inspiring and exciting enough for my work.

The Netherlands remain one of the very few countries that have dedicated public funding to design and a highly established experimental design market, which creates an interesting phenomenon that many designers also get to be recognised as artists and starting to move between these worlds. That’s how I got into the art world, although I came from a design background. Without this particular system and market, I may still end up in the art world, but it will be a much longer and challenging journey.

CNTRFLD. Much of your work imagines new ways of organising care, labour, and relationships. From where you stand, what feels most urgent right now in how artists and institutions rethink the way they support one another?

YA. Honestly, I think supporting each other to have time to rest and to be kind to ourselves is probably the most urgent activism. We are living in an overwhelmingly frustrated time; we fight so hard to just exist beside trying to contribute to a difference. I think we should acknowledge that it is already an achievement and preserve a little gentleness for each other. You know, when it’s winter outside, let’s allow ourselves to rest so that we can be ready when the right time comes.

CNTRFLD. Teaching and mentoring are an important part of your life alongside your artistic practice. How does working with students’ feedback into your own thinking, and what kinds of conversations do you find yourself returning to with them?

YA. Thank you for this question. The art and creative industry have a particular kind of cruelty, that our work is so close to ourselves while the professional field requires you to see yourself as a commodity of sorts. And sometimes the latter overruns your head and makes you feel like your artistic yearning is trivial compared to surviving as a commodity. Finding that balance for myself without being cynical about the industry is an important journey that I don’t regret. But it is also a traumatising one.

Students these days spent a fortune to study just to get into an extremely low return market, it would be triple traumatising if, along this line we also lost our passion and ourselves. So, for me education is more than passing on knowledge, or seeing someone’s growing trajectory. It’s also a community work where I tried to prepare students for the professional reality while valuing themselves as creative human beings. Industrial landscape changes all the time, but art comes from the unique souls of ours. We have to preserve our “aura” for ourselves, against all the odds. So, for me, most of my teaching time is about that. How do I, now work as a teacher, a symbolic figure who is supposed to know how “it” works, use this position to empower students to believe in themselves instead of some arbitrary, imaginary standards? And really, I feel my work is done when I see a student change from “I want to be a successful artist” to “I feel healed by my own work, and I am so proud of it.”

CNTRFLD. Looking ahead, what are you currently exploring or excited to share next? And for people drawn to similarly interdisciplinary or socially engaged paths, what advice would you offer about staying curious and grounded along the way?

YA. Next to Liquid Dependencies, I have been working on a project called Alchemy of Commons, research on funding and institutional support for socially engaged art and collective actions. After nearly a thousand hours of interviews, conversations and workshops, we developed a cosmo-gram for collectives and communities to map out the complex dynamics and challenges within collectives. And we hope this can become a tool for funders and institutions to make more supportive policies for collective work.

I am not sure I am in a position to give advice, because I think everyone has their way to engage with society. Personally speaking, I always find inspiration from genuine personal problems. When working on large scale, societal questions, it’s easy to approach it from an abstract, analytical, theoretical, sometimes even moral point of view. But reality is full of contradictions and irrationalities, and I feel that’s where the keys to unlocking new horizons are. Maybe to tie back to the beginning of my interview, I think one of the reasons that the version of Communism/Socialism we went through fell through because we let theories dictate real experience. But if we let life teach us, we might get to the question/answer we need much faster.

About the artist.

Yin Aiwen is an artist, designer, researcher, and occasional institutional strategist. Departing from the idea that “the technological is institutional, the institutional is technological”, Yin reconsiders and reimagines the socio-economic, cultural, emotional, and bodily conditions, etc. by designing the new techno-institutional around care ethics. Her work often begins with ambitious speculative questions and uses critical theory as a design brief to create new systems of value through different forms of demonstrations, such as a performance, a game, a digital platform, or an exhibition. Her writing appears on international platforms such as e-flux, LEAP, DAMN magazine, Arts of the Working Class, and more.

YIN teaches at the Design Academy Eindhoven and the Master Institute of Visual Cultures, the Netherlands. She is an Asymmetry scholar conducting PhD research at the Advanced Practices program at Goldsmiths, University of London. She founded and directed Stichting NextKin which researches and develops future-proof social support systems based on long-term mutual caring relationships. In 2019, Yin received the INFORM prize for Conceptual Design for her work.

About Thresholds of Becoming.

Marking its 40th anniversary, esea contemporary presents Thresholds of Becoming, a group exhibition curated by director Xiaowen Zhu that brings together six artists—Xin Liu, Charmaine Poh, Minoru Nomata, Yang Yongliang, and Yin Aiwen—whose practices explore states of transition, instability, and becoming. Framed around the idea of transformation as an ongoing, restless process, the exhibition considers how meaning, material, and social relations are continually reconfigured, positioning uncertainty and mutation as generative conditions rather than deficits.

Across sculpture, installation, and participatory systems, the exhibition foregrounds “in-between” spaces—ecological, technological, and social—where new forms of connection and care might emerge. Yin Aiwen’s evolving Liquid Dependencies project stages speculative, role-based scenarios that rehearse alternative models of interdependence and collective organisation, inviting participants to test the infrastructures of care across imagined futures. Together, the exhibition reflects esea contemporary’s own trajectory of transformation—from its origins as a grassroots initiative to its current role as a leading platform for ESEA diasporic practices—inviting audiences to consider how fragility, care, and relationality might shape more adaptive and collective futures.

At esea contemporary, Manchester UK, until 17th May 2026.