Mirror Image 1999-2002

This collection brings Xiang Jing’s life-size works together for the first time. With their characteristically rich countenances, works in Mirror Image pay attention to the conflict enacted against the external world by the individual. The prominence of agony and the transformative process of puberty found in this body of work is supported not only by the artist’s personal experience; it has always been Xiang Jing’s preferred issue to investigate “existence”. In this body of work, Xiang Jing explicitly rejects realism, and returns to an internalized artistic expression. The personalized fashion that is characteristic of Xiang Jing’s works serves to lay emphasis on the subjectivity of one’s worldview: on one hand, objects that appear in the reflection from a mirror are not the true objects themselves; on the other hand, “mirror image” is, undoubtedly, also a symbol of Xiang Jing’s self-reflection during this period.