According to Aristotle, tragedy tends to reveal itself more in the misfortunes of morally noble people rather than in the average person, highlighting the cruelty of fate. In contrast, Xiang Jing's sorrowful sculptures are often modeled after the vague appearances of ordinary people. Although Xiang has always been fascinated with traditional European tragedy, her works intertextualize today's highly intensified urban life. In last year's solo exhibition “Will Things Ever Get Better?” tame young acrobats' bodies were spread out one after another, piling layer upon layer, so as to form a tower, an apt metaphor for a highly collaborative mode of production. Gazing at these statues, people might feel a certain pessimism, wishing to break free and yet unable to do so.
Speaking of Xiang Jing, people cannot help but thinking of the female figures of her solo exhibitions "Keep in Silence" and "Naked Beyond Skin" — rational, calm, as Lucian Freud described the human body — leading the female body to be her main creative theme, her indissoluble responsibility to "feminism". Here, Xiang has not shown any resentment to the critics' "narrow" understanding of her work, but has on the contrary looked at it with indifference. She says: "It does not matter, it is just a definition of it."
However, combined with last year's solo exhibition, Xiang has attempted to use the medium of sculpture to investigate the meaning of existence of the individual in the "living state". Initially, the artist kept the issue secret because of her gender, rendering her sculptures in even more feminine postures, yet without the slightest hint of lust, while others showed a sense of rejection, detached to the point of fear. As she has begun exploring the issue more thoroughly, a transformation from inside to outside has taken place, and the individual has started appearing as but one of the messes, as "the Other", expressing a complicated relationship such as that of the acrobats, who depend on and are constricted by one another. Thus, it is not difficult for people to think of the pessimism of existence in the à la existentialism.
According to Xiang, planning an artwork can make a person live in self-doubt and apprehension. Moreover, she adds, the medium of sculpture is quite time-consuming, including diverse processes, and China