Silent Elles

avant-garde experiments in general should not be all denied, because it is during the very process of experiments that experimental arts are examined, and the good differentiated from the bad.
Nonetheless, I was surprised by her position and attitude towards contemporary art, and more astounded by the charisma manifested in her subsequent and recent works. The complicated living conditions in contemporary China are challenging both to our understanding and our artistic expressions. This is not a problem that can be solved by reading or learning, for there is no ready answer. One has to depend on experiences, practices, and reflection. Or else only one simple condition is demanded, and that is a firm position and a determined attitude. With a position ensured, everything else could then be cleared up.

Generally speaking, these new works of Xiang Jing originate from her subjective observation and learning from a certain stratum of the real society. Her works which combine actual events with fabrications assume a “new state” that is characteristically realist, personal, and subjective.
If the personal quality refers to what the artist herself experiences externally, “simultaneity” seems a more adequate and precise choice of word for realist. The figures depicted realistically, by and large, represent mostly the current conditions and faces of women who appear around in her life, some of which even bear marks from her own life.
One can then tell the kinship of Xiang Jing’s works to realism, and her academic education background. In an email to me, she wrote, “I want to defy the current industrial mode of production through my works. I emphasize the traces that human beings leave in this world, the power of emotions, and those things that are essential, rough, sensitive, including the pursuit of quality in a traditional sense. Perhaps such emphasis is laughable in today’s society, like Don Quixote, but everyone should express one’s own opinions, and do so straightforwardly, instead of being carried along by the tides of popular opinion, or becoming isolated, anxious, and perverted.”
The writings show her interests in, if not bias towards, the academic mode of experience, as real