Jinya Zhao: Holding Air, Holding Light

A poetic, cross-cultural meditation on light, color, and perception through the sculptural practice of artist Jinya Zhao, featuring writing by Emma Crichton-Miller and Dr Xiaoxin Li.
Jinya Zhao: Holding Air, Holding Light explores the sculptural and perceptual practice of artist and researcher Jinya Zhao. Combining blown glass with drawing, installation, and spatial choreography, Zhao’s work occupies a liminal space between fragility and presence, memory and light. Rather than present finished objects, she creates conditions for perception – inviting viewers to pause and inhabit moments of perceptual suspension. “Glass is not what I make, but how I listen to time,” she writes. Integrating theory and practice, Zhao transforms glass into an artistic language that connects memory, perception, and experience. This book features an essay by arts writer Emma Crichton-Miller and a conversation with Dr Xiaoxin Li of the Victoria and Albert Museum. With 50 full-color images and bilingual text, Holding Air, Holding Light is both a meditation on perception and a space to dwell within.

Jinya Zhao is a London- and China-based artist and researcher whose practice explores the fluid thresholds of perception, memory, and material presence. Working with blown glass, layered transparencies, and site-responsive installation, she investigates how vision, sensation, and time overlap. Zhao is currently completing a PhD at the Royal College of Art, and her research centers on synesthetic touch – the convergence of visual, tactile, and emotional experience. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prague Gallery of Czech Glass, Qingdao Art Museum, and Ulster Museum. Zhao’s practice re-frames material not as a medium but as a condition for perceptual and emotional resonance.