After going through numerous births and miscarriages, Xiang Jing intends to conclude the stage of her work that concerns the "female body." To engage in critiquing her work is like travelling to a nation of women that is about to declare independence. The scaffolding has yet to be removed, but a mood of festive observance is in the air.
　　For an artist to conclude a stage in her creative work usually means that her passion and energy toward the theme has found release, and she realizes that to continue would lead to nothing but self-replication of a certain few pieces. A better reason might be that her iconic pieces had already been produced, and the artist's desire for expression had been gratified. If she ever resumes this theme sometime in the future, it would mean that broader understanding and experience will have shown her new possibilities of self-overcoming. Xiang Jing's present achievements in sculpture give ample proof of her singular strength within a certain thematic range. The works that best represent the level she has reached are "Your Body"(2005) and "Are A Hundred Playing You? Or Only One?"(2007)
Viewed externally, these two sizeable pieces exceed the usual -scale of her works. The former is the largest of her pieces that deal with a single human figure, and the latter is a tableau that nearly amounts to an engineering project. Of course these two pieces do not owe their importance to their unusual volume. Their size serves to demonstrate this artist's acute instinct for proportion. That is, when dealing with a possibility that stretches the ordinary, she chooses a fitting scale for the sake of emphasis.
　　Along the thematic thread of female physicality, "Your Body" and "Are A Hundred Playing You? Or Only One?" are separated by three years. If we see the former as the full confirmation of this theme, then the latter is a summing up of the same theme. The former speaks with intuition, courage, and passion; the latter shows thoughtful intelligence and apt structural arrangement. More importantly, these two pieces correspond to two intertwined strains in Xiang Jing's thinking, namely (to borrow two ready-made terms) "feminism" and "femininity." My understanding of these two terms, both of which have to do with the female gender, is that "feminism" emphasizes political reality; it has to do with resistance and subversion directed against patriarchy, chauvinism and sexism. Its insistent edge sometimes reaches the point of overcompensation and reveals a radical, culturally vengeful mentality. "Femininity" is mindful of the equal dignity and value inherent in human beings of either gender, and it responds to this world from a standpoint of independent female awareness. For Xiang Jing, a clear line has not been drawn between these two kinds of awareness: her "A Hundred" of the female body negotiates the ground between them. Yet the psychic force and expressiveness she pours into her works gives them—first of all—a strong validity as forms.
　　"Speak through the body"—Xiang Jing's initial approach was consistent with the collective course of contemporary feminism, even though she objects to the label "woman artist." She feels that it comes laden with prejudice and "violence that pins down a woman's flesh like a butterfly." Nevertheless, if it were not for the overt context of feminist theory and the concept of "second sex" as a barrier she had to struggle against, her creations could hardly come across with such clarity, force, and effectiveness. In fact, when standing in front of her sculptures, I plainly sense an invisible cordon. Even in conversation when I began to speak of the female body in "Your Body," she immediately corrected me: "This is a man'sbody too." This response exposed her tense attitude toward the topic of gender. The tautness of her nerves, with their readiness to snap out a retort at any time, reflect her paradoxical mental state: on one hand she hopes that viewers will forget her gender and treat her as simply an artist; on the other hand she often focuses on detecting and nabbing chauvinism, which indicates considerable intensity in her feminism. Her phrase "break through gender" means that gender is a theme, perhaps even a magical spell, and that "Your Body" has the intention of breaking that spell. (See "The Transcended Body" a dialogue between Huang Zhuan and Xiang Jing)
　　This piece exhibits to us a female body with nothing left out. This woman's body size exceeds the norm, and every part of her is open to our line of sight. The spread position of her legs serves to expose and even distend her pubis, so that one's gaze can look into her vagina straight up to her womb. This body has not a shred of covering, not a vestige of a secret, yet this poses a predicament to us as viewers. It is a sense of frustration and unworthiness such as was felt by Lin Zhiyang in Flowers in a Mirror.[1] What is more, finding ourselves before such an imperious figure, we seem to be under an imperative to blur our own gender, otherwise we are liable to get slapped, like the young man in Farewell My Concubine who studied female roles but tended to bungle his lines. 
　　Xiang Jing often claims that this work was done "in the first person." The idea of first person here emphasizes her fully subjective standpoint for executing the work. In other words, this is womanhood as she conceives and feels it to be, a woman created by a woman, focusing on expression of female power. A figure thus produced occupies the opposite pole from male aesthetic expectations of women. Based on the feminist analysis, the supposed pleasure of viewing in our gender-imbalanced world has been split into active/male and passive/female sides. The determining male gaze projects its fantasies onto the female body, and style is determined accordingly. In her traditional role as exhibit, the female is put on display and gazed at. Since her appearance is supposed to have visually enticing impact, we can say that she signifies "being seen." In this sculpture, "being seen" is retained as a formal shell, but it is cleverly turned around as a weapon. We see a fully formed woman, yet do not sense a wisp of desire on her part…The creative stroke here is that psychic contention is given form on the visual surface. Shrinking back and partially covering the (female) body is necessary—perhaps central—to a man's viewing. To watch a woman peel off layer after layer of disguise until she gives up the last line of defense—this is a male pleasure that combines sexual desire and lust for power. But in this sculpture the woman gives up any "passive" stance of screening or evasion; her paradoxical nakedness effectively undermines sexual consumption by the male. Its power lies in the way it spurns the sexual gaze and revels in its self-sufficiency. As a physical shape, its effectiveness is due to its sexual "zero-state"—its neutral tendency. It is like the newly created female from an ancient myth not yet wrapped up in the realities of gender. She is without consciousness and experience of sex. She is merely a living thing, holding onto her unknowing state. Yet her unusual body size is imposing—like a revelation of original female life force. With perhaps a touch of maleness to augment its physicality, this figure of ambiguous sexual characteristics enacts a "dissolution of male subjectivity by the female."
　　Actually "Your Body," by means of its utterly open pose, arrives at an extreme of self-closure. In fact, the sealed-off self is the secret core of Xiang Jing's temperament, as in the spiritual fastidiousness shown in "White Virgin" (2002). For Xiang Jing, the self typified by a virginal body is a pure, unsullied being—a symbol of the completeness of an individual's spiritual world. Growing up means that one must accept the stain of the patriarchal male world and the unraveling of self. In her eyes, a newly menstruating girl has a look of fear and distress; a bad girl who prowls the night has a dissolute, crumbling face. The bodies of mature women, such as the mother in "After Yawn"(2000), have a tainted, shameless air about them. What is more, they act as collaborators in the fact of male power. The adult woman in "Gift" (2002) bends over with a smile pasted on her face, looking like an inciter-to-crime; in her hand she wiggles a small toy, as if tempting a pure little girl to give up the last line of defense and follow her into the bottomless pit of the world. It is not hard to imagine that on Xiang Jing's inner horizon, a little girl has held a place through the years, not loosening her claim upon memory—a serene, vulnerable child who seems quiet and mild, but whose nerves are quite sensitive. For this girl, the built-up impingements and beckonings of the world have found no release in action; everything is held inside, like seething lava, creating a huge, painful gulf. Yet like a girl in one of Balthus' paintings, she shows nothing externally except perhaps a stiffness of carriage and a sleepwalker's manner. It is as if the temporal setting has frozen for her, forever, at a certain moment.
　　Thus "heaven" in Xiang Jing's lexicon (see "Heaven" [2005]) is elaborated into a transcendent post-death realm, a chance for slumber "outside of consciousness" like a dog stretched out in snoring oblivion. No longer needing to sense those abrupt external changes, that teeming material world—this is happiness; this is release. "It is beautiful when everything stops. For me that is heaven." It would seem that only death or a fantasy of death can interrupt growth, or interrupt the incursions of the outside world and thus somehow preserve a person's purity. But when the effort toward purity can no longer stave off immense forces from the outside world, then a dramatic self-abandonment will occur. This emotional motif hidden in Xiang Jing's works is worth taking note of. The "classic feel" that some people have discerned in her works is in fact an elaborate shell which carries a fictive message of self-offering. The abandonment of a person's body is used to symbolize the spirit or psyche that gives itself up, in such a way that the person is completely handed over to the greedy world of desire.
　　Actually, the path to release for a sealed-off self lies in turning toward the objective world: it takes real-world experience to break the impasse and find ways to heal. "Other people are not hell after all..." So wrote the Polish poet Zagajewski. "If you can glimpse them at the break of dawn,/ when their eyebrows have been combed by dreams."(Another Kind of Beauty) And in the words of Rilke, a poet whom Xiang Jing is fond of, "Pass between these two kingdoms/...In these two kingdoms conquer the passing years."(Duino Elegies, #1)  The boundary imposed between inner and outer, between the transcendent and the experiential, between dream and reality, is an infernal obstacle which we should ceaselessly try to get past. Discovering a rich lode of common feelings within human nature, though it may not erase our own solitary pain, can nevertheless yield true consolation. It is also helpful in ridding one's psyche of violent unruliness and of exaggerated gestures of self-sacrifice. It also spurs us to view our own pain soberly and astutely, as a tiny version of the general human predicament. The theme of Xiang Jing's "The Open" (2006) is about taking an accepting outlook toward the objective world. With a mindset of gradual opening to the here-and-now, one's self-caused anxieties will gradually diminish, and in their place will come greater amplitude of experience. She came to be aware that "it is important to settle into feeling another person's spirit"—whatever kind of spirit in whatever kind of body that may be. Whether it be the abnormal girl who said "I'm 22 years old and have never menstruated" or the old woman randomly glimpsed on the street in "Secret in a Twinkling"(2005), all hold within them the mystery and wonder of life. In the course of observing, pondering, and giving expression, Xiang Jing's theme of "female body" has gone beyond experiences of the pubescent self to enter more rigorous depths of reality. At the same time, her reflexive view of the sealed-off self, along with her expressive treatment of it, has gained greater perspective and precision.  "The Center of Quietude" deals with the particular self-given pleasure that a woman finds in  masturbation. The drawn-together features are handled with striking faithfulness. Such a theme is not easily addressed by a "girl" who refuses to grow up, who is overly immersed in her personal world. Only a mature maternal source can give birth to such a resolute, unsparing treatment.
　　The gradual build-up of such experience and recognition led finally to the creation of "Are A Hundred Playing You? Or Only One?" It is said that this piece originated with some photographs that Xiang Jing took in a park. Photography is a favorite activity for Xiang Jing in addition to her sculpture. Once she took a group of little girls to a park for picture taking, and when time came to rest, the girls quite naturally sat around the base of a pear tree. In no time they became familiar, and they naturally let their hands rest on each other's bodies, or pillowed their heads on each other's shoulders. This scene had an effect on Xiang Jing, and it gradually evolved into the form of the present piece.
　　As with many creative projects, the finished piece was quite far—perhaps entirely different from—the original conception. Her memories of the park were not retained as formal elements of the scene; instead, a different crystallization of mood was put to use. The piece as now displayed consists of seven girls seated around a foot bath. Their lax poses suggest that bedtime in near; their expressions are fatigued, unfocused, slipping into a daze. The atmosphere is hushed, so hushed that it seems a secret　ceremony is underway. They lean against one another and stroke each other's skin in a wordless yet affectionate exchange. The inner area of the collective circle is filled with fantasy and peace. The basin—a centerpiece rich with possible stories—has its source in the artist's memories of washing her feet together with her younger brother as a child, which hold a feeling of familial closeness. The girls in the park revived those wonderful memories of childhood, and when memory overlapped with memory, she hit upon the humble but unexpected scenario of foot-washing. This undoubtedly strengthens the piece's structural and narrative cohesion, which in turn strengthens the theme's expressiveness. Ties of affection are thus extended and broadened to include the whole "female tribe." Suppose we say that Xiang Jing's previous works centered on portraying the forbiddingly solitary lives of individual women, then this piece brings those individuals together, as if musical notes were captured in mid-air and written into a rhapsody in a tender, tranquil mode.
　　In this work we do not see gender serving as a basis for sharp-edged critique. Instead, the piece brings genuine female presence and female emotions to the fore. This yin quality gives a surface impression of vulnerability, meekness, and inner wounds that inspire pity. But this is not the "submissive beauty" of the second sex. It is the archetype of a realm that has gotten away from desire and tumult as it moves toward dreams and stillness, like the "anima" that Carl Jung wrote about. Like the "animus" it corresponds to, it exists deep in the makeup of a living thing. If we say that the animus symbolizes yang qualities, or pragmatism and action, or will to power and ambition, then anima symbolizes serenity and dreams, silence and nurturance. As the critic Gaston Bachelard wrote in his Poetics of Reverie, "Any man or woman who walks down and still further down the ‘slope of dreams' will find the serenity of his anima deep within. He finds it by walking downward, not by plunging downward. This indefinite deep place is the haven of feminine serenity. In that serenity free from worries, ambitions and schemes, we find peace that is suited to us, and our entire being finds rest."
　　This yin-natured serenity is alluded to in Xiang Jing's piece by the invisible image of water. Water is undoubtedly a paradigmatic symbol of yin polarity. It laps against our desires and anxieties; its existence is a life-fostering wellspring. In ancient Chinese philosophy, it furthermore symbolized the highest good ("Utmost goodness resembles water," Laozi); the passage of time ("Transitory things are like this water, flowing past day and night," The Analects); and a force that overcomes all things ("Nothing under heaven is milder than water, yet nothing can rival it for wearing down rigid things," Laozi). The foot-basin placed in the middle, like the rim of a well, symbolizes the existence of water. In fact the formal tension in this piece lies in the confusion between daily life and a spiritual ceremony. Like a not-yet-focused camera shot, we slip between the two and ascribe the traits of one to the other: daily life is accorded the dignity of a ceremony, and the ceremony is accorded a quotidian concreteness. We can feel a circulation of psychic energy at this site, which bespeaks the breaking down of boundaries between the transcendent and the experiential. The two are superimposed here, merging into one.
　　However, the boundary here is being broken down within a world that is still female. The circle in this piece is the visible rendering of a magical spell, a classic structure of psychic self-closure. Yet the "self" here has been expanded from a female individual to collective femininity. Communication is now possible among these individuals, yet in this tableau of figures, each with her back toward the viewer, Xiang Jing once again—and perhaps for the last time—emphasizes the statement she has tried to make thus far.
　　March 2008