Xinan Helen Ran

Xinan Helen Ran is a multidisciplinary artist who creates installations and public art encounters, using collapsible materials such as fabric, text, natural elements and found objects. Her work explores the intersections of trade, waste disposal, labor, leisure, and homemaking in the new world. Xinan is drawn to the point where trauma, nihilism, and humor converge.

Based in Brooklyn, Xinan creates portable installations and public art encounters. Ranked “Highbrow and Brilliant” by New York Magazine’s Matrix (2023), she is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow, a 2025 NARS Foundation Fellow, a 2024 More Art Commission Artist, and a 2024 NYSCA grant recipient. She was a resident at the LMCC Arts Center (2022), and an Ox-BowFellow (2016). Exhibiting nationally and internationally, Xinan has collaborated on public projects with the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology(Cambridge, MA), Stone Quarry Art Park (Syracuse, NY), and Beam Center(Governors Island, NY). Xinan is an art educator, an art administrator, and as et designer for new theaters.