Wang: Your works seem to be closely linked with your own life experience?
Xiang: It is at the very beginning. For a long time, I followed my nature, or in other words, I followed the feminine way of thinking. It took me a long time to realize that females use their bodies to think about and feel about the world. So their opinions about the world do not come from knowledge or abstract logic, but from experience and emotion. Maybe that’s also the reason why most female artists are so wild at the beginning but their career can easily die aborning. That’s because with the process of aging, a woman gradually loses the sensibility of the body due to things like marriage or kids which would cause a shift of emotions. I was quite upset when I realized it. But it also gave me the opportunity to reflect on myself, to try my best to overcome these things.
Wang: By “overcome”, do you mean getting out of the creation pattern of such kind of experience?
Xiang: I don’t want to rely solely on experience. Maybe it results from marginalization, females tend to deviate from the society. I believe women are more likely to think about some ultimate questions, which is also a channel to art creation.
Wang: What sort of ultimate questions have ever bothered you?
Xiang: Being alive itself is something hard to figure out. When we were little, we thought becoming an adult would be so annoying. It was hard to understand and accept growth. When I finally got over with it, I started to think about the sense of existence, i.e. confirming my identity, whether or not I’m alive, or what the meaning of being alive was. I may keep on asking the question about life and death, which can also be seen as a way fighting against fear. Luckily, I found art as a way to express my feelings. I convey my thoughts through my works. Although there’s still no