Untitled, 2016

Having emigrated from China to the Netherlands at the age of fourteen, Xiaoxiao Xu (1981, China) describes photography as the “antidote to the isolation she felt, and a way of defining herself intuitively without need for language.” An article in a Dutch newspaper, telling of residents from remote agricultural regions in China building homemade aircraft, formed the inspiration for her series ‘Aeronautics in the Backyard’. Xu travelled to China to record this absurd yet infinitely appealing phenomenon. The resulting images attest to beauty and humor in everyday life and leave room for the viewer to dream, just like the Chinese ‘aeronauts’ portrayed therein.