Holding Air, Holding Light explores the sculptural and perceptual work of artist and researcher Jinya Zhao. Combining her signature use of blown glass with drawing, installation and spatial choreography, Zhao’s works inhabit a liminal space – between fragility and presence, memory and light, visibility and sensation.
Rather than present objects as finished forms, Zhao creates conditions for perception. Her works shift under natural light, respond to atmosphere, and dissolve the distinction between seeing and feeling. Using transparency, layering and spatial tension, she invites viewers to pause and inhabit a moment of perceptual suspension. As she writes: ‘Glass is not what I make, but how I listen to time.’
By integrating theory and practice, Zhao constructs immersive encounters that heighten sensory awareness, transforming glass into an artistic language that connects memory, perception, and experience.
The book includes an essay by Emma Crichton-Miller, arts journalist, critic and author, who situates Zhao’s work within a wider contemporary context of poetic minimalism and material resonance. A conversation with Dr Xiaoxin Li, Curator in the Asia Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, extends the discussion into questions of cultural space, temporality, and how we interpret sensory experience across traditions.
Featuring 50 full-colour images and texts, Holding Air, Holding Light is a beautifully constructed meditation on perception as process, light as substance, and material as invitation. It is a book not only to look at, but to dwell within.
Details
Project Editor: Susanne Hillen
Designer: Jenny Kohler
Size: 235 x 210mm (portrait)
Pages: 144
Reprography & Print Production: Hurtwood, London
Printed & bound in the UK by Halstan
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