From September 23 to October 27, 2011, artist and sculptor Xiang Jing holds her solo exhibition titled “Will Things Ever Get Better?”. Conception of this exhibition started from March of 2011, and it proves to be one of the most important exhibitions academically at the Museum.

Three years after the debut of “Naked Beyond Skin” series, the exhibition that has received much attention, Xiang Jing themes her solo exhibition with a question, “will things ever get better?”. She presents her new set of works with an attitude best characterized as “question-asking”. Xiang Jing’s former methodological focus on the inner, internal, perspectival, personal world expressed solely through female figures (“Naked Beyond Skin” series), is replaced by something quite on the contrary - in “Will Things Ever Get Better?”, Xiang Jing aims to dissolve the perceived barrier between sociological studies and contemporary art, and presents artworks that are reflective, meaningful, and aesthetically profound, all through an art form that is structural and allusive in nature.

“Will Things Ever Get Better?” consists of two sets of works, namely the “Animal Series”, and the “Acrobat Series”, totaling 14 pieces of works, shows the artist’s attempt to find a pathway in our current contemporary art language. They seek to explore our individual position in the game structure of the society, in which we face our “predicaments”, in the philosophical sense of the word.

In the eight sets of works that make up the “Acrobat Series”, Xiang Jing extracts two acrobatic techniques, “body - lifting” and “contortion”, and fashions them in a hyperbolic form, hoping to highlight to the audience the “unhuman” aspect of the impossible postures. In the towering Mortals - Endless Tower, every female performer turns their legs to the front of their bodies, sustaining the unthinkable weight from the top, while keeping their smile necessary for any performance. The smile seems stiff and empty, trying to cover up the immense physical