Hall of Gems and Mineral

RUYUN XIAO

Ruyun Xiao is an artist, writer, researcher, exhibition designer, and illustrator from China. She explores the concept of bodily knowledge through performative form. Her imaginative process embodies herself in first-person memories, stories, and myths. She produces frameworks, and instruments to choreograph experiences of the unknown. Using writing as the foundation, she engages with performance, design, publication, and sound to communicate sensorium ways of knowing and unknowing.

Xiao is currently based in London, United Kingdom. She recently graduated from the Critical Curatorial Cybernetics research master program at Haute école d’art et de design(HEAD), Geneva, Switzerland. She worked as a 2D designer at Ralph Appelbaum Associates in New York City for six years. She received an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute in 2018, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the Maryland Institute College of Arts in 2016, and a BA in Advertising from the Beijing University of Technology in 2015.

performances, exhibitions

Design

Writing, Publishing

Halls of Gems and Minerals

2020
Exhibition Design, Scientific Illustrations
Client: American Museum of Natural History
Art director: Christiaan Kuypers

Xiao has participated in the final design and fabrication of the exhibition of Halls of Gems and Minerals in the Natural History Museum, New York.

The renovated hall shows the vast mineralogy collection of the museum, which highlight more than 5,000 specimens. The design of the exhibition tries to highlight both the beauty of the specimens themself but also the complex science behind them. Xiao developed the graphic system based on the curatorial structure of the hall. Her illustrations help the visitor visualize the specimen formation process from geological time scale and atomic level.