Xingchen Xiao

About

I am Xingchen ‘Chris’ Xiao, an artist, a seeker, and a storyteller. My work is born from the tension between self-expression and societal expectation, between the beauty of authenticity and the weight of imposed norms.

As a child, I learned that to be different was to be seen as a threat. Growing my hair long, wearing dresses—these simple acts of selfhood made me a target. School became a place of cruelty, home a space of silent disapproval. There was no refuge, no one to stand beside me. At fourteen, I left school to work in a factory, exchanging textbooks for survival.

Yet, even in the dim glow of machinery, my imagination burned bright. Fashion, art, and design became my sanctuary—spaces where identity is fluid, where the boundaries of gender, tradition, and expectation can dissolve into pure creation. But access to these worlds was scarce. In my hometown, resources were limited, and self-teaching was an uphill battle. This absence of opportunity only deepened my conviction: art should not be a privilege of the few but a language for all.

For years, I remained defiant, insisting on my right to exist as I am. Then, last year, a series of hardships forced me to change my appearance, to conform in ways I never thought I would. It was a painful compromise, but it did not silence me. Instead, it became the catalyst for my work—a portfolio of resistance, a visual manifesto.

I create because I must. My art is a declaration, a refusal to yield. It is for those who live in the margins, for those who have been told they do not belong. It is for the queer child who sees beauty in places others fear. It is for the lonely, the silenced, the dreamers with nowhere to turn.

Fashion, art, and design are more than aesthetics to me—they are acts of defiance, tools of liberation, a voice for those who have been denied one. Through my work, I reclaim space. I tell my story, knowing that in doing so, I am telling the stories of many.