Fei(Fiona) Qu is an artist based in Chicago. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied in the Fashion, Body, and Garment program. Working primarily with textile and installation, her practice explores the relationship between the body, material, and emotional states. Through processes such as knitting, unraveling, and assembling, she investigates how repetition and touch can translate internal experiences into physical form. Her work often exists in an in-between condition, where structure and instability coexist. By extending textile into space, she creates environments that reflect tension, vulnerability, and transformation. Her installations emphasize process, material behavior, and the subtle shifts between holding and release.
Soft Descent, 2026, Yarn, Wire
Soft Descent, 2026, Yarn, Wire
In this work, I start from a knitted structure. Usually knitting suggests something stable and complete, but here the structure begins to loosen and unravel. The threads fall and extend into space. Some parts still try to hold their shape, while other parts start to slip away. By extending the threads into space, the piece moves beyond a flat textile surface and becomes something more spatial and bodily. The fibers start to occupy the surrounding space, almost like an emotional state that expands outward.
Knitting feels like a second skin to me. It is a material that stays very close to the body, and the repetitive process of knitting is slow and physical. Through that repetition, emotions can gradually settle into the material. For me, it becomes a way of translating internal feelings into something tangible.
In this installation, I start from a knitted structure, which normally suggests stability, order, and containment. But instead of keeping the structure intact, I allow it to loosen and unravel. The threads begin to fall, stretch, and move outward into space. Some parts of the piece still try to hold their form, while other parts begin to slip away.
I’m interested in this moment of instability—when a structure is no longer completely stable but has not fully collapsed either. The work exists in that in-between condition. It is not fully constructed, but not completely undone.
By extending the threads into space, the piece moves beyond a flat textile surface and becomes something more spatial and bodily. The fibers start to occupy the surrounding space, almost like an emotional state that expands outward.
The installation stays within what I call an “unresolved state.” It reflects a moment of tension between holding together and falling apart, where the structure is still present, but its stability is uncertain.