Xiang Jing’s Body Language

Xiang Jing is a Shanghai-based artist.  

 

Xiang Jing, Are a Hundred Playing You? Or Just One?, 2007. Painted fiberglass, 240 x 240 x 140 cm. Courtesy of the artist

There are two themes regarding my work. My primary theme is the spiritual world. Every image I create revolves around self-reflection and questions about the existence of the female human being. My works on this theme are more related to the human body. I have worked on this theme for many years, and this year I am planning a series of traveling solo shows around Asia to present my works on this theme.

My secondary theme is more personal. At times, I try to see the world from my own perspective. For me, the exterior world is like a mirror. I see myself in a mirror. Some part of the external world is out of people’s control and confusing, like seeing oneself in a mirror. In that sense, I am posing the question: Is the world really what it looks like? Like mundane life, it is easy to confound reality and photographs, memory and objectivity, self and the other, and spirit and material.

I am trying to express what I’m experiencing. The language of the world is full of violence and deceit. How do I know what is real? My work is a struggle to fight against human weakness: stubbornness and irresolution, self-contempt and self-conceit, emotional abandon and physical restriction, all of these I strive to overcome.

Your Body actually started my first-person narration approach. When I was creating that piece, my life was very isolated, and that instinct just burst out. I strongly wish my first-person narration approach could get more established. Sex organs are not there for men to view. They’re just an existence. Men don’t feel a sense of sex after viewing the organs, because they have lost the due sense of temptation that conforms to their expectations. I also believe some women artists only use sex or organs as a tactic. What they present is still a state of being viewed.