Xenia Burn
- Anna Lilli Garai
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Xenia Burn’s work develops slowly. Her pieces come together at their own pace, like a memory that surfaces in parts. She doesn’t paint people, but their presence is always there—felt rather than shown. Instead of laying out a story, she builds the mood around it. Texture brings in feeling, and the paper itself holds weight, time, and quiet shifts. What’s missing is just as present as what’s there, giving room for something personal to come through. She works with what the material gives her. A small stain, a tear, or a rough edge can change the direction of the whole piece. Each work grows on its own, shaped by attention, not by plan.
Q: What made paper more than just a material for you? When did it start to feel like a metaphor?
A: What is a metaphor? It's a way of speaking about something too complex to name directly. A way to hold what can't be held.
Paper became a metaphor for me the moment I stopped treating it as a surface — and began listening to it as a presence. It's strangely human. Layered, yet fragile. It absorbs everything: ink, water, pressure, time — just as we absorb memory, emotion, experience. It wrinkles, tears, stretches, recovers. And every mark it carries, it remembers.
Like us, paper holds both vulnerability and resilience. It can be almost transparent, yet insists on its form. It can act unpredictably, as if it has a will of its own.
I don’t use paper as a tool — I enter into dialogue with it. Through it, I speak about what matters most in my work: the fragility of identity, its fluidity, its shifting, layered nature. Paper isn’t just what holds the piece — it is the piece. It became a living metaphor for how we move through life: breaking, softening, gathering ourselves again.
Q: You talk about identity as layered, fragile, and always shifting. What does that feel like while you’re working?
A: Identity, for me, isn’t a label or a fixed definition. It’s a living, breathing process — a constant rearranging of fragments: memories, pain, closeness, things we’ve inherited or chosen to forget.
While I’m working, I feel this instability play out through the materials. The layers of paper feel like layers of the self — one revealing, one hiding, one pressing through another like a buried emotion. At times, something unexpected surfaces: a color, a form, a tension. It mirrors something in me I hadn’t noticed until it appeared in the work.
The process becomes a quiet conversation with myself — through texture, imperfection, rhythm. I'm not trying to define identity, only to let it unfold.
Q: In works like "Dorothea’s Bed", there’s a quiet back-and-forth between past and present. How do you decide what stays and what fades?
A: That piece is very personal. In "Dorothea’s Bed", the past and present lie beside each other — like lovers who are no longer together but still holding hands in a dream.
I don’t consciously decide what stays. I follow what feels true, and what feels like an echo that’s ready to leave. Some fragments speak through the body — you feel them more than understand them. A certain color or torn edge feels necessary, even if you can’t explain why. Those elements stay.
What fades doesn’t really disappear. It’s buried in the lower layers, in the memory of the material, in textures no longer visible but still felt. Sometimes to become a new version of yourself, you don’t erase the old one — you lay her down gently, like in a bed, and let her rest.
Q: Your process mixes chance with control — cutting, staining, layering. When does a piece start to feel finished?
A: My work doesn’t end so much as it falls silent. It’s like a conversation between me and the material has run its course, and there’s nothing left to say.
If I keep adding, and start to lose the sense of wholeness — that’s the sign to stop. I’ve learned to recognize that moment, to respect it.
There’s always a tension in my process: between planning and surrender. I can intend a shape, but the ink will bleed its own way.
I can cut something carefully, and the paper might tear unexpectedly. The work feels finished when I stop trying to control it — and let it exist as it is.
Q: How do you want people to feel when they stand in front of your work — not just see, but feel?
A: I want them to feel quiet. That kind of inner silence you feel when something resonates deeply, even if you can’t explain why. I don’t need viewers to understand the narrative.
I want them to recognize a piece of themselves in the work — a moment, a memory, a doubt, a soft ache.
My work doesn’t shout. It whispers. And if that whisper meets something already living inside the viewer — then the work has found its conversation partner.
Q: You don’t paint people, but their presence is everywhere. What’s the power in suggesting someone, instead of showing them?
A: I’m not interested in how people look — I’m interested in how they feel. Their echo. Their tension. Their trace. That says more than a visible figure ever could. I think of it as painting states of being. Loneliness, tenderness, restraint.
You don’t see a face — you feel the atmosphere. And often, absence becomes more alive than presence.
We feel those who are no longer with us more vividly than those standing next to us.
The open spaces, the layers, the textures — these create room for the viewer to step in, to finish the image with their own associations. Suggestion makes space for empathy. For recognition. For a connection that’s not imposed, but personal.
