Mind Versus Matter: Fairytale or Allegory?

Zhu Zhu, Tr. Denis Mair

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When dealing with a pre-established identity, acts of self-transcendence do not come easily. Viewers of Xiang Jing’s past works can readily peruse them according to a linear scheme: subject matter is confined to the feminine world; the viewpoint adopted is consistently a personal, inward perspective; figures are realistic but possess strong psychological tension. In the overall context of contemporary art, they show a rare emphasis on contemplation of life’s essence. Her works can be seen as a hard-won trove of bounty which transcends our temporal circumstances.
When an artist hones her attention and discourse along a single line, the distinct personal features thus established imply renunciation. Temptation always exists, and forks still wait along the path. At a certain moment the question may arise: should one continue to deepen the previous path of expression, or should one relinquish a unitary creative direction so as to search one’s memory and experience for new possibilities? Xiang Jing’s answer tends toward the latter option. In 2009 after concluding her Naked Beyond Skin exhibition, she openly bid farewell (at least temporarily) to her treatments of female subject matter. Soon after, “bidding farewell” became a leitmotif in her artistic life. She experienced bereavement upon the death of her father, and she left Shanghai, where she had lived for many years, to return to her familiar haunts in Beijing. Around this time she began to incubate a massive conception, keeping it to herself. Currently, as her upcoming exhibition at Today Art Museum draws near, her new works are gradually coming to light. They are divided into two series — “Acrobats” and “Animals”. These two series can be described as oracular texts: they portend further emergence of works pertaining to her overarching conception, and at the same time they can be understood as test operations pertaining to a transitional process, like the new-style locomotives that rumble from the roundhouse at the railway museum near her new studio.
By turning away from oneself, “pulling away one’s strongest source of support,” one can give form to new possibilities. In this new phase, this is the precondition set by Xiang Jing, a means of helical expansion that can amplify her means of expression. Her attitude has