Bortolami is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Xiyadie, marking the first gallery show in New York of his hand-cut and dyed paper works. This presentation follows his debut American exhibit at the Drawing Center co-curated by Rosario Güiraldes and Hera Chan in 2023. Since his premiere in New York, Xiyadie’s work has been presented at the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

Xiyadie–meaning Siberian butterfly–began working under this pseudonym in the 1990s, upon his move to Beijing as a migrant worker from Weinan, in the Northwest of China. The chosen name denotes a twinned freedom and resilience, as the unbounded and delicate creature is primed to survive the harshest of climates. Prior to his relocation, and since the 1980s, Xiyadie has continued the oft-feminized domestic métier of papercuts, freely snipped and hand-dyed, a tradition passed down from his mother. Like his self-appointed moniker, the cutouts are at once fragile, produced from gauze-like rice paper, while deftly articulate–depicting intricate scenes of queer desire, fantasy, and reality through vivid and precisely incised tableaus.