In making her work the means by which she looks at the outside world, Xiang Jing has complicated her position as a creative subject versus the created object, or self versus others. This complication is clear in the two of her works included in this exhibition. One is her 2007 work, The Center of Quietude, which captures most vividly a young girl’s moment in finding out about her body through masturbation. This moment is full of ecstasy and trepidation of discovery, complete with self-absorbent expressions and dripping sweat. But is this all there is, an adolescent coming into contact with one’s own body? In talking about this sculpture, Xiang Jing reflects, “Everyone has sexual desires, which, although secret to each individual, is a known fact to the world. I thought, therefore, if I could treat the desires in a most candid attitude and turn myself into a viewer, maybe I could overcome my initial embarrassment or psychological blockage due to the conflicts against how I was taught or trained in certain aesthetic and moral traditions. I will finally identify with myself. What this implies is that you enter your deepest inner self in the unlikely circumstance which is at a public display. What an interesting switch.”
In the paradox of finding the most secretive in what’s laid bare in public, Xiang Jing confronts and then reaches compromise with her inner fear and her primal trauma. The work becomes the screen that mediates