CULTURE-CHINA: Nuder Than Nude

BANGKOK, Jun 2 (IPS) - In a society that dictates how a woman should look - hourglass figure and shiny, long hair - Chinese artist Xiang Jing dares to turn stereotypes on their head and disturb those who view her fibreglass sculptures.

In the Shanghai-based artist’s exhibit, ‘Naked Beyond Skin’, visitors may well find themselves fidgeting and taking a second look as they make their way around lifelike, life-size or larger-than-life sculptures, of nude women in various everyday moods and moments.

Unlike the usual art pieces though, these polished and painted sculptures do not embody the ideal female proportions. Many in fact reflect the opposite - the real, the imperfect.

Instead of svelte women and glamorised supermodel-like bodies, there is plenty of flabby skin, droopy breasts, and bulging stomachs in the works of the 40-year-old Xiang Jing, a Beijing-born artist whose sculptures have become popular in China’s art scene in recent years.

Right by the entrance to the Tang Contemporary Art gallery, where ‘Naked Beyond Skin’ runs until Jun. 7, two female figures stand next to each other, their eyes closed. The woman at the back is reaching out slightly, almost touching the waist of the other.

Inside, viewers are greeted by sculptures of a group of women seated in a circle, as a bird watches from a distance.

These women are so ‘present’ and open to the public, and yet are in a world of their own, as exemplified by the work ‘The Centre of Quietude’, which features a woman deep in her act of self-stimulation.

‘‘The fact that they may not be conventionally beautiful, (and are) even ugly, is a direct challenge, not to conventions, but to our consensual misunderstanding of the complexities of the ‘every-woman’ Xiang is presenting to us," explains Norman Ford, curator of the exhibit.

‘‘Helping select and install her work, as well as writing a lengthy essay for the catalogue, let me assess a kind of artwork I had not experienced - very well-made, time consuming work that also layers a powerful set of questions into its depictions,’’ he told IPS.

Xiang Jing’s natural, real women open up opportunities for multiple interpretations. In ‘Face’, a woman stands in a corner, breasts spilling over her folded arms. But her facial expression exudes a sense of unhappiness - could it be due to her ‘imperfect’ body?

‘‘They may well be ‘uncomfortable in their own skin, but it is precisely through this implicit discomfort that their power can be unleashed,’’ Ford added. Viewers can interpret the naked sculptures’ messages without first categorising these characters by social identities, labels and clues, including clothes.

‘‘To me they’re not just portrayals of nude bodies, but also (of) a nude mind," mused Pichaya Piyassapan, project and exhibition executive from Tang Contemporary Art and herself a sculptor. She indicates one of the two female figures in ‘Peacocks’ which has an oversized head and eyes that seem to look right into one’s soul, just as hers are open to you.

Many of the works of Xiang Jing, who graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, include sexuality, social stereotypes and even natural beauty. Her sculptures are not particular characters, but of the biological woman of no specific social status or race.

In an interview with the editor of the exhibit catalogue, she said: ‘‘From the perspective of the viewers, this group of works is just like the skin of life being torn off. Or it’s something exposed when a woman, a human, is stripped out of clothes." She added: "What you call abstract to me is us, the human beings, when the farraginous things were taken out of them. Actually, you may not even know them."

Since 1995, Xiang Jing’s works have been exhibited in various cities and countries, from Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Xiamen, to the United States, Japan, France and Switzerland.

Recalling the feedback to the Bangkok exhibit when it opened on May 15, Pichaya said: ‘‘Some of the viewers have said that they found the sculptures very interesting, yet at the same time disturbingly life-like,’’ she said. She also had to put up signs around the exhibit as "children were very eager to touch the sculptures".

‘‘Naked Beyond Skin’ will travel to Beijing in September, where it will be on show for a month.

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