The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Women are physical animals, and it is their basic way of thinking to think through the body. This is a frustrating conclusion I've reached gradually through long-term observation, and all my efforts are attempts to overcome this basic habit of thinking.
― Xiang Jing
Body, a physical existence that everyone can feel as they have it and take it for granted, becomes a complicated and mysterious object when we contemplate it. There are numerous documents about the study of our body in the west, especially the knowledge revolution stimulated by feminism and the practice of body narrative by feminist artists have enriched our understanding of the human body. Body is not only a natural concept but also a social and cultural one. Therefore, the body has a history of its own. It is argued in Fragments for a History of the Human Body (3 vols, edited by Michel Feher) that the human body image, body experience and body knowledge are dependent on specific living environments and cultural patterns. Sociologist John O'Neill even puts the bodies into five categories: the World's Body, Social Bodies, the Body Politic, Consumer Bodies, and Medical Bodies. In contemporary Chinese art, few artists create their works with the body narrative, but Xiang Jing is one of the few and the most representative one.
Xiang Jing is a contemporary artist who started her career in the mid and late 1990s... Her excellence as an individual exempted her from reliance on her female group and earned honor for her female group instead. Since 1990s, the efforts made by female artists as a group have never constituted a threat to the powerful paternal culture, let alone caused changes to it. Accordingly, I think the female, as a disadvantaged group, can hardly surmount its rival in the form of a collective force. But the group maybe bring up some powerful individuals. One western feminist once said, “Though we didn't change the world, at least we changed ourselves.” This is a sad, eclectic saying, but the powerfulness of one individual