HerVerse - PARSONS DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY 2025

Xiangying Fang

Multimedia Artist | Virtual Environment Designer

Xiangying Fang is a multimedia artist who crafts immersive, absurdist digital worlds to investigate feminine identity and subconscious perception within virtual spaces.

Fang's arts explore from visual and digital media to textile fibers and fabrics. Her work explores feminine narrative through the lens of subconscious identity, absurdism, and sensory disorientation. Rooted in virtual environments and multimedia practice, she builds immersive experiences that unravel the strange and fragmented ways we perform and perceive gender on digital platforms.

Thesis Faculty

Clarinda Mac LowLouisa CampbellSven TravisLoretta Wolozin

HerVerse, above all, is my feminist absurdist narrative of gender dynamics in Chinese online society—embedded in a film version of a VR experience that overwhelms its viewers with intense sensory overloads.

The environment of HerVerse is a leveled surreal gallery space, where every element—organic, feminine landscapes, reactive soundscapes, and explicit visuals—symbolizes the gendered dynamics of power, the gaze, and societal expectations.

Audiences are forced to forfeit their agency in this disorienting world and interact with its elements. The landscape, off-kilter and unpredictable, increases the discomfort of the participant. The environment itself is appalled at the voyeurism inherent in the viewer’s presence.

The guiding idea is simple yet confrontational: to make the viewers uncomfortable through a speculative visualization of the oppressed feminine experience.