Yan Xing was raised by his single mother, who was a fashion designer. In this environment, he began to be exposed to visual arts through various kinds of fabrics and by reading Western fashion magazines. He became acquainted with manifold processes of shaping beauty and achieving exquisite quality, through which he investigated the significance of art to him personally. This Gesamtkunstwerk began with a gelatin silver print of the artist's mother cutting fabric, out of which unfolded a complex work discussing the formation of the artist's stylistic signature. This piece simultaneously paid tribute to Carl Andre, whose work had a huge influence on Yan Xing in his youth, to French New Wave film posters, and to the artist’s mother. Traditional Chinese textile techniques, such as silk fabric and embroidery, shuttle through the sculptural and photographic parts of the installation, where they are organically combined with materials representing Western industrial civilization such as rebar, cement, and stainless steel. Yan Xing's works often express the evolution of culture in ways that are both cross-cultural and modern. He describes this connection as situated between the skin and the bones, as the complex soft tissues that connect and shape both craftsmanship and esthetics.