Click the link to view the full version: Creating “Slow Art” in a Fast-Paced World: How She Earned Offers from World Leading ArtSchools
Emma Xu, Somerville House, Class of 2026
University Offers
University of the Arts London (UAL)
-Fine Art: Photography
-Photography
Parsons School of Design, The New School
-Fine Arts ($52,000 Scholarship)
Pratt Institute
-Fine Art ($80,000 Scholarship)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
-BFAin Studio: Photography ($92,000 Scholarship)
University of Edinburgh
-Fine Art
Predicted A Level Grades
Photography A*, Art A*, Chinese A*, History A, Economics A
EPQ Project
Designing and Building a 3D-Printed 4×5 Large-Format Camera
“In this rapidly developing digital age, I am still committed to things that many people might consider ‘troublesome’ or ‘slow’, “Emma says.
She is passionate about traditional film photography. Her favourite place at school is the darkroom, where she enjoys watching images gradually emerge in the developer. For her artistic practice, she immersed herself in field research, venturing deep into local communities and urban streets to gather material and inspiration. During the intense university application season, she also remained calm and composed. As she puts it:”Go with the flow and trust that everything happens for the best.”
Emma understands that some things can only be seen when we slow down.
Slowing Down to See the “Forgotten People”
Coming from an artistic family, Emma has travelled with her parents since childhood, visiting exhibitions of all sizes. For her, art has always been an everyday presence, absorbed naturally through constant exposure.
After joining WASCZ, her creative practice was given a new intellectual foundation through her history studies. From Grade 10 onwards, this rarely chosen subject accompanied her throughout both the IGCSE and A Level stages. The major historical shifts, social transformations, and cycles of rise and decline introduced by her teacher fundamentally reshaped her artistic perspective. She began to integrate reflections on history and contemporary society into her work, using art as a medium to document time and express humanistic inquiry.
Guided by this approach, she turned her attention to the old landscapes and everyday lives along the Grand Canal in Changzhou (Jiangsu Province).
As a key artery in the city’s development, the centuries-old Grand Canal flows through Changzhou, bearing witness to its rise and transformation. Today, redevelopment has gradually led to the demolition of old buildings along its banks. The former bustling docklands have faded into memory, and long-established riverside communities now stand at a turning point of change. Along this historic waterway, Emma conducted over a year of field research, culminating in one of the most significant works of her creative journey — Memories of the Canal.
Over countless weekends, Emma moved along the canal, documenting streetscapes through photography, interviewing local residents, and even spending one or two days living alongside them to better understand their daily lives. Over time, she was drawn to the worn chairs placed outside doorways and the sofas under bridges where neighbours gathered. “Sometimes they would sit there for an entire afternoon, watching the canal flow or chatting with neighbours. These chairs became part of their lives, and to me, they represent the most authentic and simple form of everyday life,” Emma said.
Inspired by these observations, she created the installation work Memory Sofa within the Memories of the Canal series. She collected old clothing donated by local residents and layered these lived-in fabrics to construct two large sofas, on which viewers could sit and feel immersed in the canal’s lived history. Above the sofas, she suspended old fishing nets once used by canal communities to make a living, with fabric-stitched human figures hanging between them. “The fishing nets act as vessels of memory, while the figures symbolise fragments of memory left behind through time,” Emma explained.
“My work explores how identity is shaped by memory, time, and history. Through photography, I document residents who are struggling to adapt or survive amid demolition. What I aim to present is not simply nostalgia, but the complex interweaving of individual and collective memory within rapid urban transformation.”
Shortly after completing the series, Emma held her solo exhibition in Nanjing, Oher Archives, independently curating, installing, and presenting all works herself. The Canal Memory series was featured in the exhibition.
In the exhibition foreword, she wrote:
“This is a visual journey through traces and remnants, the other and the self. Each work is both an archive and a private imprint of memory. I hope to create an archive of the other for those who are overlooked and forgotten by time.”
For Emma, the most valuable meaning of artistic creation lies in retrieving those seemingly insignificant individual stories from the torrent of history, ensuring they are not forgotten. Her grounded fieldwork and sincere empathetic observation have given her work a vivid sense of humanity, becoming a key strength that resonates with top international art institutions.
Building with Kindness: Sustaining Impact Through Service
If Emma’s artistic practice is rooted in empathy, then this sense of compassion and responsibility had already taken root when she first arrived at WASCZ.
In Grade 10, shortly after joining the school, she organised and launched a charity performance to help children in Changcheng Town, Wuwei City, Gansu Province realise their dream of a field trip to Dunhuang. From coordinating external partners and arranging performance resources to fundraising during the school’s Family Day, she was involved in every stage of the project. With the support of WASCZ students and staff, the performance—held at the Youth Theatre in Nanjing—ultimately raised approximately RMB 140,000.”I donated all of the funds to students at Wuwei High School. Most of them are left-behind children,” Emma shared.
To fulfil their Dunhuang dream, she later organised a joint field trip for WASCZ students and 27 students from Wuwei High School. Together, they travelled to Dunhuang, where they experienced the heritage of the Silk Road, explored mural art, and engaged with Chinese history. In this way, kindness crossed mountains and distances, taking root in the hearts of young people from both regions.
In Grade 11, Emma founded “WAVES”, a student-led society providing online English charity lessons for children in underprivileged areas of Liangzhou District, Gansu Province. She shared that international scholar students from the UK, who had only recently joined the school, were also inspired to take part in the project. From designing lesson plans and defining teaching content to delivering weekly online classes, the initiative gradually became fully established. During lessons, students also shared elements of international culture and colloquial expressions, opening a window to the wider world for children in remote regions.
Empowering Young Minds: An English Language Learning Adventure in Rural China
Today, “WAVES” has become an official charity society at WASCZ, passed on from cohort to cohort, allowing this spirit of kindness to continue and grow.
“These experiences taught me how to turn ideas into sustainable and actionable projects—much like my artistic work,” Emma reflects.
Free Exploration, Bold Experimentation, and Steady Growth Towards the Future
Emma’s bold artistic practice, mature project execution, and grounded approach to personal growth all stem from the open, supportive, and exploratory environment of holistic education at WASCZ. She reflects that the school provided her with a high level of tolerance for experimentation, enabling her to push boundaries and embrace trial and error with confidence.
The school’s well-equipped art facilities offered strong support for her creative exploration. She spent much of her time in the darkroom, where she developed a deep engagement with traditional film photography. Through repeated experimentation with complex darkroom techniques and experimental photography processes, she gradually refined both her technical foundation and her distinctive artistic style.
For her EPQ independent research project, when she conceived the ambitious idea of building her own camera, she received dedicated guidance and full support from her EDT (Engineering, Design and Technology) teacher. Using the school’s 3D printers, she independently researched structural design, developed components from scratch, conducted iterative testing, and refined the assembly process. Ultimately, she successfully built a fully functional 4×5 large-format camera, demonstrating the limitless potential of artistic innovation through practice.
A rich and diverse boarding environment also enabled her to interact closely with peers and teachers from different cultural backgrounds, where she formed some of her closest friendships during her school years. Outside of academic and creative pressures, she returned to the piano, using music as a way to release stress and maintain balance in her rhythm of life. Looking back on her years at WASCZ, she summarises her journey in three words: growth, exploration, and friendship.
Rather than rushing towards outcomes or following trends, she chose to slow down, root herself deeply, and grow steadily in an age defined by speed. At WASCZ, respect for each student’s individuality and encouragement of independent exploration have enabled her to develop not only as an artist, but also as a thoughtful and courageous young creator.
Now holding offers and scholarships from several of the world’s leading art institutions, Emma stands at a new starting point in her journey. It is reasonable to believe that this young artist—who has consistently continued to explore—will move forward with a deep respect for history, a strong sense of empathy for humanity, and an unwavering passion for art, continuing to shape her own life through light and shadow.
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