Mind Versus Matter: Fairytale or Allegory?

seemingly taken on a note of firm resolve: by pulling away her own support she gives up personal introspection and her focus on the inner life. Now she turns to tableau-like scenes and implied story lines to express the theme of “predicament.” As I understand it, the predicament she expresses is the extent to which people are given over to externals (objectification): in other words, it is the effect of external reality upon one’s inner being; it is the alternation wrought by such a reality… In fact, as I see it, this issue was already implied in her treatments of female subject matter; it was implied in her in her contemplation of the individual’s living essence. Now she hopes to shift her expressive thrust toward the exterior façade that is presented. In other words, she magnifies this effect and brings it into the foreground as a formidable opponent to be dealt with. In a recent interview titled “World of 'Being', Are You Alright?” she commented on her upcoming exhibition:

“Acrobats” has a distinct flavor of performance, but “Animals” is more connected to the sense of being surrounded by onlookers. On the surface these themes seemingly have nothing to do with my focus on human nature and emotional pain in previous works. Maybe it is because the part of a person I was concerned with before had to do with natural attributes, whereas the issue of “predicament” that I’m working with now is directly connected to a person’s sense of identity. “Role” or “performance” or “being looked at” — I think these concepts can bring out fresh, intense expressions of identity. At the same time, through these ways of “seeing” people are reminded of their predicament.

For Xiang Jing in the past, selfhood was ensconced in a contemplated figure: through her quiet, solicitous gaze, she entered into the figure’s painful condition. Now she seems to have deliberately put aside her genius for empathy. Like the director of a dance drama, she manipulates a structured whole. In other words, her fabricated acrobats and animals tend to be treated as image-forms which contribute to a spatial whole rather than as stand-alone works. Meanwhile, allowance has been made for the perceptions and physical presence of viewers, for their lingering