Vivian Xu is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher. Her work investigates issues at the intersection of biology, technology, material fabrication, and design. These works often take the form of objects, installations, wearables, and toolkits that traverse the boundaries of biological and digital media. Her creative practice is deeply informed by emerging practices between the arts and sciences that merges approaches from the studio and the laboratory. Her process is research driven and grounded in design methodology. Her work sits at the interface between art, design, and science.

 

Xu’s work has been exhibited, performed, and presented at various institutions in China, the US, Europe and Australia, including the National Art Museum of China (Beijing), the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (Shanghai), China Design Museum (Hangzhou), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), NTU Center for Contemporary Art (Singapore), the New York Science Museum (New York), SymbioticA at the University of Western Australia (Perth), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), Art Laboratory Berlin (Berlin), Humboldt University (Berlin), and Kapelica Gallery (Ljubliana). In 2022, her piece The Silkworm Project was selected the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology Hua Awards Shortlist. 

 

She is an Assistant Professor of Media and Art and the Major Coordinator of the Computation and Design major Digital Media track at Duke Kunshan University. She is co-founder of the Design, Technology, and Radical Media Labs (DTRM) with Prof. Benjamin Bacon, a member of the XResearch Cluster at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Netherlands), and research associate at the Data Science Research Center, which is part of the Institute of Applied Physical Science and Engineering (IAPSE) at Duke Kunshan University. In 2015, Vivian co-founded Shanghai-based trans-disciplinary design lab Dogma Lab with Benjamin Bacon. 

​

​

​

You can find more information at Vivian Xu | Scholars@Duke.