Armory Sculpture 2026: Shuyi Cao

BANK is pleased to announce that it will present Shuyi Cao's sculptural installation in the Sculpture section at this year’s Armory Show in New York.

Inspired by the xenophora, a marine snail known for collecting shells, stones, coral, and other fragments onto its shell, this sculptural installation turns collected fragments into speculative lifeforms, exploring adaptation, survival, and transformation.

Rising from the floor, the works create an open ecosystem of unexpected material combinations. Driftwood, glass, shells, stones, minerals, discarded plastics, and other found materials gathered from coastlines, deserts, landfills, and quarries are assembled into hybrid structures. Natural and manufactured elements merge to evoke coral reefs, barnacles, roots, and geological growths, blurring the boundaries between the organic and the artificial.

These sculptures carry traces of multiple places. Their accumulated materials speak to movement through water, geology, industry, migration, and human circulation, while becoming something entirely new.

The installation proposes survival as an act of collecting, adapting, and transforming. Rather than belonging to a single origin, these imagined organisms embody a fluid idea of home: something continuously made through encounter, exchange, and the places we carry with us.