Xie Jing
Monster
2022
Performance video
12’19’’
I sat in the bathtub, holding a knife in my right hand, scraping the bubbles from my body as if I was plucking meat, and putting the scraped bubbles on a scale to weigh them, gradually revealing the ‘red meat’ of my body and submerging the scale.
The inspiration for this work came from a news story I happened to read about a woman’s mother-in-law calculating her wedding gift by her body weight, the same way meat price is determined.
——Artist statement
About Xie Jing:
Jing Xie (b. 1993) is a Chinese artist and researcher who is currently based in Bristol. Xie completed her BA in Fine Art at the China Academy of Art (2016), and her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art with Distinction (2019). She is studying in the PhD programme in Theatre and Performance at the University of Bristol. Her current research interests lie in contemporary art and performance studies and practice-led research.
Xie’s practice mainly explores the topics of violence, feminism, negativity, cruelty and hope, body and embodimen in mixed media within the scope of performativity, performance and performance art in the general sense, as well as embodied action. Her work is usually inspired by the embodied experiences of individuals and groups, and is presented as a combination of discovering micro-narratives in everyday life, daily rituals, her own personal metaphors and fables, and interventions involving others. Her strength lies in being present with multi- identities and using temporary rehearsal towards becoming, or directly intervening in public spaces, constructing different performative situations, spaces, and embodied actions to get close to the effort of liberation from inevitability and making solid things suffer from shock. She attempts to construct new and circulated logical relationship matrices through the exploration of poetic multi-dynamic relationships and schemas, simultaneously mediating with the uncontrollable to maintain a rhythmic balance, using it as a temporary aesthetic strategy to resist ubiquitous violence, a tool for self-reflection, a channel that can call out new paths again, and itself. Jing Xie co-founded the artist collective Hijack 打劫 Programme (2016) with Qiong Zhang. Xie’s recent work focuses on the practice and construction of contemporary performance arts in terms of ontology, aesthetics, and social culture from the perspective of feminism.
Her recent awards include: the 9th Huayu Youth Prize, Shortlist, China (2021); the 11th New Star Art Award, Jury Prize, China (2021); Performing Arts in the Digital Age Goethe-Institut Scholarship , Germany (2019). Her recent exhibitions and projects include: Unbelievable Action, A4 Art Museum, Chengdu, China (2023); Vase, solo exhibition (Hijack), Hop projects, UK (2022); Touching Reality – Since 2010 China’s Youth Art, Qionglai Art Museum, Chengdu, China (2022); Forkstone Triennial, UK (2021); JOURNEY TO THE EAST Festival, UK (2021); Forms of Civilization, Invited Exhibition, Chengdu Biennale Exhibition, China (2021); Vase, solo project (Hijack), Xinzao Space, Guangzhou (2021); Back Off, solo exhibition, 33ml offspace, Shanghai (2020); POWER PLAY Art Festival 2020, The Arts House, Singapore ( 2020); Shooting in the dark, solo exhibition (Hijack), Hop projects, UK (2020); “2020: The whole world has become a theatre” contemporary performance literature open exhibition, OCAT Shenzhen, China (2020); Hairy Death Spiral, Glasgow Contemporary Art Centre, UK (2019); UP-ON International Live Art Festival (2019); Skip-AD Play, The Savoy Centre, Glasgow International Art Biennale, UK (2018). Her recent commissioned projects include the commissioned artist of Hop Projects 2021/2020 in Forkstone, UK; the commissioned artist of JOURNEY TO THE EAST Festival 2021, UK; the commissioned artist of EMBASSY gallery 2019 in Edinburgh, UK; her main
residency includes the Art Museum of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts (2021-2022); Hop Projects, UK (2020/2021); Scottish Sculptural Workshop, Scotland (2019).