Chuxi Shui

Capstone Project: Breathing with the Wound

Breathing with the Wound is an interactive soil-based installation that explores what happens when a wound is shared between a human body and the land. The soil emits an uneven, distressed breathing sound when left untouched. When a viewer gently places their hand on it, the breath slows, creating a temporary shared rhythm between two bodies. The work shifts from treating soil as a symbolic surface to engaging it as a material that carries its own histories of extraction, pressure, and ecological change. Rather than representing damage, the installation invites viewers to enter into a relational encounter with it. Through touch, sound, and duration, the piece reframes care not as healing or resolution, but as the act of staying with a wound.

Bio

Chuxi Shui is a multidisciplinary artist working across installation, performance, and interactive media. Her work often begins with materials, images, or interactions, and develops through an interest in how people experience and relate to them. She works across both physical and digital forms, creating projects that invite participation and explore different ways of sensing, making, and responding. She is currently studying Performance Studies at New York University, with a minor in Integrated Design and Media.

Q&A with Chuxi

What inspired your project?
Breathing with the Wound is partly inspired by Ana Mendieta’s earth-body works, where the body and land are not separate but leave traces within each other.

Through my work in Performance Studies, I became interested in how relation can be created not only through movement, but through material, touch, and duration.

This project extends that thinking into an interactive installation, where soil and body meet through breath. Rather than representing a wound, the piece invites viewers to enter into a shared, fragile relation with it.

What does Performance Studies mean to you?
To me, Performance Studies is less about studying performance as a fixed form and more about understanding how meaning is produced through actions, relations, and embodied experience. It has shifted the way I think about making work, not as creating something to be viewed, but as creating conditions for interaction, attention, and response.

Why did you major in Performance Studies?
I chose Performance Studies because it allows me to explore both conceptual thinking and creative practice at the same time. I’m especially drawn to its openness and interdisciplinary nature, which makes space for working across installation, design, and performance rather than being confined to a single form.

As someone whose interests move between different media and ways of making, this flexibility has been important to me. It allows me to develop work that is process-based, experiential, and relational, while still being grounded in critical thinking.

What have you enjoyed most about Performance Studies at NYU?
What I’ve most enjoyed about PS is the sense of openness and freedom in each class. It never feels constrained to one form or method, and I’ve always had the space to explore what I’m genuinely interested in. One class that stood out to me was Performance Politics. Everyone was able to research their own topics, which made the discussions feel very personal and engaged. I especially appreciated how Professor Michelle shared different readings with each student, responding to our individual interests. That kind of support made the process feel both guided and self-driven at the same time.

Any advice for new Performance Studies students?
Performance Studies gives you a lot of openness, and that can feel exciting but also confusing at times, especially when you start thinking about the future. My advice would be to take it one step at a time and trust that your interests will become clearer as you keep exploring. You do not need to have everything figured out right away. Give yourself time to follow what genuinely draws you in.