Full-face Nudity

they are quite representational. They are about a symbolic thing of human beings rather than vision and portrait. It’s non-individual. But it’s about everybody. I think that this group of works of yours, to this meaning, is in fact a little similar to his works.
Xiang Jing: I have always been emphasizing another part. I may never go into a mode of expressing specific human bodies with pure concepts. Here is a method of transformation.

Wei Xing: So your works focus more on the personal and emotional things.
Xiang Jing: For example, as to the work Your Body, many would give lots of adjectives, such as confused, innocent and astonished, because she obviously has a facial expression. It’s just like when you look at someone in the face and you will have this kind of feeling. They would question why you do it, because in fact it will weaken many of your conceptual expressions. They would say it should a thing without a face or without emphasis on the facial features. But I say that all these details are just what I stick to. It for me is just like reading. It has a process. I utilize the day to day experience of a person. You will keep finding characters on her body — here is a scar, the hand is like that and the fingernails have something special. And it’s a kind of transformation to represent a more complex and more abundant spirit with this kind of embodiment of experience. It calls for a time and process of reading. It will have many layers. If I just want a direct expression of concept, I think it would be better for me to say some words directly. It’ll be more powerful than this. I have ever said that Your Body just came from a line in the lyrics, “this is a shock that the body gives the moldering soul”. If it can be expressed in such a sentence, why would I do this? You need to think what and how it can be done when you create art through sculpture, such an ancient way. And only by that can communication be possible. It’s also a subject that I have been considering.

Wei Xing: We often say that the flesh is the durance of the soul. But it seems in your case that it’s quite the opposite.
Xiang Jing: It’s not that way either. I couldn’t figure the body out before. I didn’t have a clear definition for it