Metachroma: Fibre at the Scale of Art
At SpinExpo Shanghai in winter 2024, Xinao put colour at the centre of Metachroma. Enlarged images of fibres rose above the knitted swatches, giving the product a presence across the whole booth.
Charcoal tones and dark, textured fabrics framed the entrance. Against them, saturated colour filled the large panels inside.
The creative challenge was to make images as expressive as paintings while keeping them rooted in the product. Fibres and yarns were mixed and arranged by hand, building each composition from real material.
Macro photography revealed the mixing in sharp detail. Fine strands crossed softer clouds of fibre; colours blended where they touched, while individual threads remained visible within the image.
Enlarged across the booth, the photographs had an impressionist quality. From a few steps away, they appeared almost abstract. Up close, visitors could see how the colours had been made from fibres.
The compositions appeared on double-sided textile panels and in moving image. As visitors walked between the panels, different colours and textures came into view.
The panels stood like paintings. Beneath them hung knitted swatches; meeting tables sat among the images. The booth felt like a gallery built around the yarns themselves.
For the first time in this exhibition series, Xinao’s presentation moved into the territory of art. Visitors could still examine the yarns, but the same fibres commanded the room at the scale of paintings. That shift helped build Xinao’s reputation at SpinExpo as a company with a visual point of view of its own.
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