What You Are Looking for is in the margin

Xingyun Shen
Is

Fermenting
a. Clothes Press
b. Marginalia Book Club
c. Wardrobe interviews
d. Scores of a grey hair
Publishing
e. Feel this, it’s still warm
f. Will You Bring Your Book to dblspce
g. The Journal of Wear
h. What You Are Looking For Is...
i. Marginalia 7 to 16
j. MANIFESTO
Reading
k. Residency, Will You Bring Your Book
Writing
l. Published articles
m. ↗ Measuring Our Impact
n. ↗ Inside Our Wardrobe
o. ↗ Envisioning the Clothes Swapping Movement
Speaking
p. Conferences
q. Podcasts
r. Interviews

↗CV

h. What You Are Looking For Is in the Margin
What You Are Looking For Is in the Margin is a three-part project about the marginalia we author and encounter in library books. Specifically, it is:

(i) An A3-sized publication of scanned pages that contained annotations by teachers, alums, and students in the MA Critical Fashion Practices library at ArtEZ University of the Arts. Prompted by my fascination for marginalia, this publication documents how page margins become sites for readers and writers to gather by scanning annotations left behind by teachers, alums and students. Inspired by Michiko Aoyama's 'What You Are Looking For Is in the Library' (translated by Alison Watts), the title invites readers to peer into the ordinary and everyday act of reading and annotating.

2024
300 pages, 280x400x20mm
Covers: Black silkscreen ink on repurposed cardboard
Binding: Glue
Paper: Recystar 80gr
Typeface: Combine
Printer: Canon Upstairs, ArtEZ University of the Arts

(ii) An accompanying essay titled: ↗Insert: This text is meant to be left behind. Let’s meet in the page margins. printed on fabric.

2024
130x1450mm
Coloured ink sublimated on cotton fabric
Typefaces: Combine
Dauphine

(iii) Vinyl installation ‘What You Are Looking For Is in the library’

2024
120x780mm
Typeface: Combine

Photos by Giulia Coluccello and me

Send me a letter sxingyun@gmail.com • Jul 2025