Exhibition
Whitespace Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland)
September 27–29, 2024

Into the Future

Premiere of You.zip (2024), a video artwork exploring digital identity.
Into the Future

You.zip (2024) was presented at Whitespace Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland as a part of Into the Future, a group exhibition co-curated by Anita Gao and Jiarong Yu.

Serving as a predecessor to Metadata (2026), You.zip is a video artwork that embodies the reduction of personal identity into downloadable data. The project originated from encountering long-forgotten personal archives preserved on social media platforms. While an individual’s online footprint can be compiled into a single .zip file for algorithms and strangers to read, the work questions whether such archives truly encapsulate the living self or only the fragments we neglected to keep private.

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Agawen is the studio practice of J. Aga (PH) and Xin Wen (CN/US). Their collaboration began in London, where they completed a joint postgraduate programme between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. They made their artistic debut during a term abroad in Singapore, followed by a UK debut later that year on the Piccadilly Lights, which received the CIRCA Public Vote Prize.

Their current body of work is about how contemporary life is structurally determined by cities and screens, and it draws from their experience as diasporic artists and their technical foundation as design-engineers. Their experimental videos, kinetic sculptures, and immersive installations have been exhibited at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, USA), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Helix Art Space (Stockholm, Sweden), and Speculum Artium (Trbovlje, Slovenia).

Formerly XJ.

Exhibitions & Appearances

2026 Solo exhibition, MVR Gallery (Ithaca, NY, USA)
2026 Solo exhibition, Helix Art Space (Stockholm, Sweden)
2025 Artist talk, Helix Art Space (Stockholm, Sweden)
2025 Silent Interference, Turtle Chamber Projects (Taoyuan, Taiwan)
2025 Alternative Roots, Hoxton Hall (London, UK)
2025 Artist talk, Bow Arts (London, UK)
2025 Speculum Artium Festival (Trbovlje, Slovenia)
2025 Artist talk, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA)
2024 Solo exhibition, Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA, USA)
2024 Into the Future, Whitespace Gallery (Edinburgh, UK)
2024 Artist talk, Technarte Conference (Bilbao, Spain)
2023 Royal Society of Sculptors (London, UK)
2023 CIRCA20:23, Piccadilly Lights (London, UK; also: Berlin, Milan)
2023 Ars Electronica Festival 2023 (Linz, Austria)
2023 ART-ACT Festival, Singapore Art Week (Singapore)

Awards & Commissions

2025 Kakilang Commission
2024 Artsted 99 Future Blue-Chip Artists
2023 CIRCA20:23 Public Vote Prize
2023 Interplay Kinetic Design: Major Award & Grant
2023 Media Architecture Biennale 2023 Finalist

Press & Mentions

Education

2023 Royal College of Art & Imperial College London
MA/MSc Global Innovation Design
Xin Wen and JJ Agcaoili