Zhenhua Bin

Xavier Bin

MediaVisual CultureCreative Technology

I work in Chinese and English, and I am interested in how images are made, described and seen.

Meet XavierBrowse the archive

About Me

Media, screen studies and museum work

Portrait of Xavier Bin in round glasses and a dark knit jacket, against a pale grey wall.

To ask of any image how it was made, who it was made for, and what it asks of the person looking.

I work in Chinese and English. I studied Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne, with a minor in Screen and Cultural Studies, and what I took from it was less a specialism than the habit above.

Lately that habit has found a practical home in museums: writing and translating exhibition texts, helping to edit and proof a catalogue, photographing and recording objects so that they can be found again. It is patient work, and it makes looking accountable.

Away from work I photograph the places I pass through: gateways and courtyards, a village in fog, a lake on a high plateau, figures that have been venerated for centuries. More recently I have been making short films with generative tools, which I treat as part of a production craft rather than its subject.

Work and projects

  1. 2026–IndependentImage-making and AI-assisted short filmsProject
  2. 2025–2026Hunan Yixiuge Institute of Cultural Relics ConservationCollection digitisation and cataloguing for several museumsWork
  3. 2025National Water Museum of ChinaExhibition project: curatorial and content assistantProject
  4. 2024–2025Mango TVChannel development intern, short-form drama distributionInternship

Education

  1. 2023–2025The University of MelbourneBachelor of Arts, Media and Communications, with a minor in Screen and Cultural Studies
  2. 2019–2022Yali High SchoolHigh school

Visual Archive

Photographs and notes from the road

Plate 01Baisha Lake, with yaksPamir Plateau, Akto, Xinjiang
Plate 02Moon gate and pavilionLiuyuan Railway Park, Jiuquan, Gansu
Plate 03The empty village in fogHoutouwan, Shengshan Island, Zhoushan, Zhejiang

Note

Most of these were taken between journeys and jobs. What holds me is the trace a place keeps: the distance a gateway frames, roofs still standing in fog, flaking pigment on a painted figure, an old map cut into a wall. It is not far from what I do in museums, which is also a matter of working out where a thing has come from.

Plate 04Houses on stiltsNear the Clan Jetties, Penang, Malaysia
Plate 05Painted figure of WeituoShuanglin Temple, Pingyao, Shanxi
Plate 06Globe and inscribed wallYali High School, Changsha, Hunan

Selected Work

Exhibition, catalogue and content

The Poetry Porcelain Voyage

Qing blue-and-white export porcelain inscribed with poetry

Dates
2025.9.30 – 12.31
Venue
National Water Museum of China, Hangzhou
Organisers
Organised by the National Water Museum of China with the Changsha Cultural Relics Store
Exhibition poster: a blue-and-white vessel covered in inscribed verse on a deep blue ground, with the title and the dates 30 September to 31 December 2025.
PosterThe Poetry Porcelain Voyage

An exhibition of Qing dynasty blue-and-white export porcelain inscribed with Tang poems, lyrics and classical prose, objects that carried Chinese verse across the sea through trade.

My part

I worked on the project as a curatorial and content assistant: writing and translating the bilingual exhibition outline, bringing the terminology of over a hundred object labels into line, and checking objects, texts and images against one another.

The catalogue was edited by the National Water Museum of China and the Changsha Cultural Relics Store. I took part in its editing, layout and proofreading, and in editing and subtitling the exhibition’s promotional and display videos.

During its run the exhibition received around 170,000 visits, and it was placed second in Zhejiang Province's 2025 assessment of museum exhibitions, an achievement of the exhibition team as a whole.

In the gallery

  • The title wall at the gallery entrance under blue light, with a model sailing ship behind a rope barrier.
    Entrance to the gallery
  • A round, lit window with scrolling ornament on a dark wall, framing a circular mirror that reflects objects in the case.
    A round display window
  • Several blue-and-white teapots inscribed with verse, arranged at different heights on pale stepped plinths.
    Teapots on stepped plinths
  • Tea caddies, covered bowls and spoons in blue-and-white porcelain on a low plinth, with pale sailing ships painted on the wall behind.
    A display before a mural of sails

The catalogue

Edited by the National Water Museum of China and the Changsha Cultural Relics Store. Two spreads are shown here; the full catalogue is not published.

1 / 2
The Poetry Porcelain Voyage catalogue: Opening of the second section. A full bleed of inscribed characters cut through by a round window, with the section title set vertically on the right.
Catalogue 1Opening of the second sectionA full bleed of inscribed characters cut through by a round window, with the section title set vertically on the right.
The Poetry Porcelain Voyage catalogue: Object spread: inscribed hat stands. A pair of hat stands across the gutter, each with its caption and note: the standard object layout of the catalogue.
Catalogue 2Object spread: inscribed hat standsA pair of hat stands across the gutter, each with its caption and note: the standard object layout of the catalogue.

Contact

Correspondence

Write to me about exhibitions, publishing, image-making, or a project you have in mind.

zhenhua.xavier.bin@hotmail.comSend an email

Try: Baisha, catalogue, Melbourne