The course at the Academy aimed at training artists to produce monumental, public sculpture. Yet Xiang Jing’s inclinations headed in an introspective direction from the outset, and after she graduated in 1995 she worked only on small, expressive human figures. The painted fiberglass Flowered Dress · Doll (Fig. 1) of 1995, about 23 inches (58 cm) tall, both exemplifies this genre of spontaneous, emotionally intimate figures and at the same time it also defines an enduring characteristic of Xiang Jing’s work, capturing that same touching innocence and unguarded openness still evident years later in Peacocks.
This image of the toddler cradling her doll (Flowered Dress · Doll) derives from a photograph of Xiang Jing at a year old (Fig. 2).[7] But Flowered Dress · Doll has a worried expression that is not present in the photograph. Xiang Jing reprised the theme of the girl with her doll again five years later in My Doll (Fig. 3) of 2000. This time the girl is a long-legged preadolescent rather than a toddler, and instead of cradling a baby doll she possessively tucks a doll with long dangling legs (like hers) under one arm, as if to insist, as the title defiantly states: “My Doll!” This girl looks askance with an expression of mistrust, mixed with uncertainty. Preadolescence is all about defining boundaries around a newly forming identity and through the doll, the child here seems to negotiate her relationship to her mother (with whom she appears in After Yawn, 2000) and to the world. The psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott created the term “transitional object” for blankets and dolls which serve this purpose starting in early childhood. “I am concerned,” he wrote, “with the first possession, and with the intermediate area between the subjective and that which is objectively perceived.”[8]