Xiang Jing (born in 1968 in Beijing) is a famous contemporary artist and sculptor. She graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. She has held several solo exhibitions and has participated in countless group shows. Private owners and museums around the world collect her works. Most of her works are fiberglass sculptures. Her notable series are named "Virgin", "Naked Beyond Skin", "Animals", and "Acrobat", which depict young women, female bodies, animals, and acrobats, respectively. Her literary works include Details and Will Things Ever Get Better?
Xiang appropriates the body as a means to explore existence and to connect her various series. In many interviews, she has articulated that she purposefully discards established social values and morals in her explorations of human nature and the psychological states of mankind. She uses the female body as a means to explore the many different layers and aspects of human nature and to capture the complex stages of human life. She intends for her female bodies to speak for themselves, rather than wanting them to succumb to the domineering male gaze and expectations of the audience. Thus, her sculptures depict plain and uncluttered bodies, bodies without gender, and bodies that attack the decaying values in a human’s soul.
Xiang Jing pays undivided attention to the representation of skin and, as a result, skin coloration stands out as a unique feature of her figures. She applies colors and polishes her sculptures onerously and single-handedly. The skin of her figures possesses liveliness, conveying a flow of blood commingled with flesh. And yet, the exceptional smoothness of her figures defies belief. In her "Naked Beyond Skin" series, her sculptures — all dressed in their birthday suits — are devoid of any body hair. Xiang has also discussed the skin of her sculptures in various interviews. For example, she told Huang Zhuan that she wants to represent the skin that one conceives, not the skin that one can see. That type of representation approximates a fuller spectrum of the conceptual property of skin than a realistic representation could offer. On another occasion, Xiang expressed that color application and techniques are languages meant to serve as media for expressing