Invasive Apparatus by Xingyu Huang

 

Xingyu Huang works across sculpture, architecture, and digital media, constructing hybrid environments where biological and industrial systems intersect. Her installations often function as living systems, where adaptation unfolds through the interaction between human and non-human agents.​

Invasive Apparatus takes the form of a circulating water system sourced from the Chicago River. Water moves through a sequence of elements — a tank inhabited by living mussels, soil beds growing ivy, a glass “stomach,” a basin, and a repurposed muffler — before returning to its point of origin.

The installation operates simultaneously as urban infrastructure and as an extended body, filtering, digesting, and recirculating matter.​

Within the space, water flow, humidity, and scent become perceptible. The damp smell of earth mixes with the metallic trace of industrial materials and the presence of living organisms. Plants, animals, and viewers share the same الهواء, subtly altering the environment through breath and exchange.​

Sustainability is embedded through this closed-loop system, where biological filtration and industrial reuse coexist. Materials often considered waste or invasive are repositioned as active agents within a functioning ecology, challenging distinctions between natural and artificial, native and foreign.​

Through this multisensory environment, Invasive Apparatus presents adaptation as a continuous process — not linear, but cyclical — where progress emerges through interaction, transformation, and coexistence.

About Xingyu Huang

Xingyu Huang is a Chinese interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago and Los Angeles, working at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and digital media. Her practice examines adaptation as a shared condition between human and non-human systems, tracing the emotional, infrastructural, and ecological reverberations of transformation. Central to Huang’s work is the creation of multi-sensory, hybrid ecologies. By integrating biological and computational systems, she constructs responsive environments where plants, bacteria, sensors, and sound coalesce. Her approach moves beyond purely visual representation, instead utilizing bio-art and data visualization to translate complex environmental processes into affective sonic and tactile experiences. Through collaborations with scientists and local communities, she explores how materials—from organic matter to digital signals—can act as sensory conduits for ecological storytelling. 

“Through Invasive Apparatus, I demonstrate how “progress” is not merely a linear technological advancement, but a circular, biological resilience. By integrating bio-remediation (living mussels and ivy) with industrial reclamation (repurposed mufflers), I make the invisible processes of water filtration and urban metabolism visible, audible, and olfactory.”​


Xingyu Huang

 

×
Check out other finalists’ artwork