xiaoyun ying

This project examines the visual and material language of financial trust through a series of six mixed-media collages. Drawing on historical and contemporary crises—from the eighteenth-century speculative bubbles to present-day digital economies—the work reconstructs the recurring cycle of prosperity, collapse, and rebranding that defines global capitalism. Each collage revisits a moment of financial faith and failure: from the tulip mania, to gold’s illusion of stability, to contemporary patterns of extraction and monopoly. Gold leaf is used as both surface and concept: its radiant luminosity evokes wealth and desire, while its cracks, erosion, and peeling reveal the fragility that underpins economic value. Archival references, historical imagery, and fragments of news media are layered within each piece, tracing the migration of capital from the material to the abstract, from resources to belief. The work situates financial systems as an ecological condition—an atmosphere we inhabit rather than observe. Through controlled repetition of light, fracture, and surface decay, the series reflects on how faith in value structures both society and self. In the final collage, gold becomes sealed and inert, symbolizing the re-packaging of instability as renewed confidence. Across the series, trust functions not as stability but as spectacle: fragile, performative, and endlessly re-gilded.