Guest House: Welcome Home: A Cross-Cultural Art Collaboration Between DXDF & Alexander Wang

In New York City’s Chinatown, an exhibition about the meaning of home is unfolding.

In September 2026, artist Zhou Xuerong’s hyper realistic figure exhibition, Guest House: Welcome Home, opened at The Wang Contemporary. It presents 10 life-size silicone figures created by DXDF. Set within scenes of tea drinking, calligraphy, cooking and erhu performance, these familiar faces lead visitors into a more intimate cultural setting.

Founded by Ying Wang and Alexander Wang, the art space is located in the heart of Chinatown. The collaboration brings figure making from Guangdong into New York’s contemporary art scene, allowing moments drawn from Chinese daily life to be viewed within a multicultural city.

For many Chinese people living abroad, Chinatown is more than a geographic community.

Familiar languages, food, festivals and everyday customs can preserve a connection to home even within an unfamiliar city. A meal, a cup of tea, a basket of dim sum or a familiar melody may bring back memories of family and hometown. Some memories remain close; others become less familiar with time and distance.

Chinatown has also long been a place where cultures meet. Chinese traditions continue here while intersecting with the wider life of New York. People preserve their cultural memories while learning to understand other ways of living.

Guest House: Welcome Home takes shape within this setting. Recognizable figures from Western popular culture enter scenes of Chinese daily life. Dressed in qipao, they sit at a tea table, practice calligraphy, prepare food, cook with a wok and play the erhu. What changes when a representative face from one culture enters the everyday traditions of another?

This is the central question of the exhibition. Visitors may first be drawn to the faces, then begin to notice the surrounding space, the actions being performed and the cultural meaning carried by these daily rituals. Welcome Home therefore reads as more than a title. It is an invitation to begin with shared experience and rediscover the emotions that different cultures can hold in common.

The institution supports Asian and Asian American artists across generations and disciplines. During a visit to Zhou Xuerong’s studio in Guangdong, Alexander Wang encountered her artistic practice and figure-making process at close range. Their shared interest in cultural exchange helped bring the figures from Guangdong to New York and placed years of accumulated craft within a new artistic context.

For DXDF, the New York exhibition is a major step built on more than 25 years of gradual progress. The journey began with a small studio, continued through the development of an 11,000+ m² production base, and has now reached an art space serving an international audience. Progress has not been quick, but each stage has added something necessary.

The same pace can be found in the making of each hyperrealistic figure. The angle of a gaze, the texture of the skin or the distance between a hand and an object may appear minor, yet each detail affects the figure’s emotion and overall presence. Repeated adjustments take time, but they allow the work to move from local accuracy to a natural whole. Every figure, technical refinement and completed project has contributed a small step toward this larger step onto an international exhibition platform.

All the figures in the exhibition were produced in silicone by DXDF. For the creative team, the goal extends beyond reproducing a likeness. Each figure must also appear natural and believable within a specific everyday situation.

A slightly raised wrist, gently pursed lips or a lowered gaze can change the emotion conveyed by a figure. These details must work together with posture, clothing, props and space. Only then can the figure become part of a complete scene rather than remain an isolated image.

The production process brings together facial structure, skin texture, hair, posture, clothing and props. Silicone provides the basis for realistic skin and facial detail, while coloring, hair work and styling establish the figure’s final visual state. Viewed up close, the skin, eyes and expression come into focus. From a distance, the relationship between the figure, objects, movement and space becomes clearer.

The figures were developed through this approach. Their faces retain a sense of familiarity while entering scenes of tea drinking, calligraphy, cooking, shared meals and music. Figures, qipao, objects and gestures work together as a narrative, leading visitors from recognition toward an understanding of cultural context.

For visitors familiar with Chinese life, these scenes may connect with family memories and childhood experience. For visitors from other cultural backgrounds, they offer a tangible entry point into Chinese daily life. The figures therefore become part of a cultural exchange. Alongside the craft itself, the creative team hopes visitors can sense the exhibition’s reflections on cultural encounter, everyday life and emotional connection.

Figure works can appear in wax museums, museums, themed exhibitions and art spaces, but each setting asks something different of them. Appearance, posture, clothing and scene must respond to the purpose of the display and to the way visitors will approach and understand the work.

The New York presentation reflects accumulated experience in hyperrealistic figure making, silicone sculpture and scene-based expression. Within an art platform open to international audiences, the figures carry the emotions and cultural details of Chinese daily life into a new setting. The collaboration allows the work to be seen again within another cultural environment.

For us, bringing the work to New York marks a new beginning. Every figure completed and every detail refined over more than 25 years formed one of the small steps that led here. Gathered in Guest House: Welcome Home, those steps support a presentation that crosses geography and culture, allowing figure making to take an active role in artistic exchange.

The exhibition begins with daily life and uses the human figure as its medium. A visitor may begin with a familiar face, yet leave with a deeper understanding of another way of living—or with a renewed sense of their own connection to home.