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The Permanent and the Insatiable: 
Born to Sea


→The Permanent and the Insatiable series


Xin Liu, Born to Sea (2026). Exhibited in "The Aural Sea," Uzbekistan National Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.



Mixed Media InstallationXin Liu’s The Permanent and the Insatiable: Born to Sea (2026) are made from hand woven post-consumer plastic (PET bottles) and submerged in tanks containing an enzymatic solution. Activated by heat, the reaction gradually breaks down the material over the course of the biennale. Liu’s sculptures resemble both industrial and organic forms: the substructure of machinery or the skeleton of a disappeared organism. Blooming when pristine, the sculptures slowly wilt and decay, prompting reflections on what will emerge in its place. Examining the afterlives of materials and infrastructures left in the wake of the vanished sea, Liu’s work offers a speculative and practical model to think through impossible scenarios.

The work takes its cue from an episode in the history of the Aral Sea. In 1847, Russian ships were transported in pieces across the steppe and reassembled in an inland basin with no outlet to any ocean. They were, in a sense, born into a sea from which there could be no departure. Liu’s sculptures inhabit a similarly closed system, though here the movement is not towards construction but towards undoing. As the plastic is broken down into its molecular constituents, what seemed durable and self-contained is returned to a more uncertain state, caught between technological persistence and biological transformation.





The Permanent and the Insatiable:  Born to Sea 

2026

Post-consumer PET and PET filament, PET-degrading enzyme and chemical solution, TLC tank, incubator

Two tanks: 1000mm (W) x 2200mm (H) x 1200mm (D)

Credits

Project Management: Sórcha Bradford
Design: Shijia Huang, Irene Hsu, Andrew Friedenberg 
Fabrication: Kirsty Liang, Chris Istance, Yingtong Lin, Barbie Kim, Adina Seitkazina, Yerkezhan Seiitkazina, Elanka Jiang, Ellie McKnight
Biology consultant: Erika Erickson
With thanks: Nicole Kaiser
Commissioned by The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation