Xiang Jing

Xiang Jing was born in Beijing in 1968 and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Xiang currently lives and works in Beijing.

Xiang’s artwork reveals a sense of insecurity through which the misty nature of the modern human character and life itself are accentuated and reified. Xiang Jing seeks after the existential truth of life through her continued investigation of “internality” in her work. Xiang Jing’s methodology is problem-oriented; although the realist sculpting language in which Xiang’s works are conducted has been marginalized today, she has made idiosyncratic, powerful, and influential modernistic experiments within that artistic framework by giving each of her sculptures an individual appearance and character, hand-painting her sculpture, and choosing fiberglass as her principal material. These innovative efforts engender an impression of her work that is “representational and realist on the exterior, but highly contemplative and inquisitive in the internality of human nature.”

In four successive phases of solo exhibitions, Mirror Image, Keep in Silence, Naked Beyond Skin, Will Things Ever Get Better?, Xiang Jing is highly reflective of issues related to identity, psychological states, and the body. Xiang probes beyond the female body schema and transcends “gender,” and the concept of body is used as a medium to question the essence of existence, and the relationship between individual and the world at large. The Will Things Ever Get Better? phase consists of Acrobat Series, and Animal Series, which metaphorically represent the “predicament” we confront as humans.

Xiang Jing has held solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, the Today Art Museum Beijing, Tang Contemporary Art Beijing, and the Shanghai Art Museum. Xiang’s works have also been exhibited at various museums in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Norway, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria. Her works have been collected by prestigious institutions including CAFA Art Museum, Today Art Museum Beijing, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Long Museum Shanghai, and the Chazen Museum of Art. Xiang Jing was named the Martell Artist of the Year in 2012.