Ellen Pearlman, New York-based writer and editor of the Brooklyn Rail who lives part time in China, reviews “I Want to Be With You Forever,” the first solo exhibition by young female artist Lin Jingjing. Though curated by well-known critic Li Xianting, this exhibition is somewhat outside of the Chinese contemporary art establishment: presented in Songzhuang (an artist village on the outskirts of Beijing), featuring an emerging artist, an emphasis on a craft-based practice, and an explicit use of feminist tropes.
“I Want to Be With You Forever,” Solo exhibition by Lin Jingjing, curated by Li Xianting
Nov 25 – Dec 14 2009 Songzhuang Art Museum, Tongzhou, Beijing
Five years in the making, Lin Jingjing’s solo show at the Songzhuan Art Center uses videos, photographs and sculptural installations to examine the two narrow stages allotted to fertile women in China – two archetypal characters I have nicknamed “Foxy” and “Forgotten.” In squeamish detail, Lin shows the moment of marital transformation where the “Fox” is deflowered to become “Forgotten.” In a slow motion video, a needle is thrust deep into the folds of a perfect rose bud sewn shut and stitched down before it is given the chance to bloom. This piercing fall from virginal grace gives way to multiple issues of memory, loss and alienation.
The mainstream Chinese advertising industry emphasizes the happy moment of nuptial bliss as the ultimate goal in a woman’s life, and Lin deconstructs this in her installation “I Want To Be With You Forever,” consisting of 300 wedding photos from 300 couples. The brides are cut out of the picture and sewn onto the top of 300 toy white canopy beds. Brides sliced out of the picture renders them unable to connect with their intended, a commentary on the fallacy of their idealized situation. “Never Apart” takes 75 cheap glass and chrome picture frames and slices the bride and groom apart, leaving them to gaze lovingly at empty images or shards of reflections of themselves. “I Want To Fly” is a series of cotton books where the main character is cut out of the photo and their outline is sewn up. Their original image is placed on an adjoining page, completely out of context, symbolizing the sad reality that they can leave China only in their fantasy. They are trapped in their environment and only by floating on fluffy dream cloud can they be free.
Lin’s photographic series “Dress” is a damning indictment of woman-as-perfect hymen. Using long stemmed red roses, she shoves the flowers into suggestive poses inside both empty dresses and stretched out lace panties, creating a bold statement against the reductive ontology of woman as reproductive muse. In her mixed-media series of the same name, she frames perfect white wedding dresses inlaid with puff-ball clutches of eggs against a background of multiple cut outs of Japanese sex toy dolls in lewd positions.
The question of what happens to all these beauties, these oozing eggs and luscious roses once they begin to fade and wither, is examined in “Private Memory,” a bulky wooden card-catalog whose draws have been pulled out and scattered about. What is left behind are sepia photos with cut out faces lying on bundles of fluffy white cotton. “Nobody Knows I Was There, Nobody Knows I Was Not There,” a series of 160 CCTV News photo images cut and stitched onto tin boxes continues this scene of absence, memory, and validation of self. With just one individual in the photograph cut out and removed, it raises the question: would the world be any different if that individual did not exist? These kind of questions show the direction Lin’s work is moving towards, one that deepens the discussion of what it means to be human in these rapidly changing times.
Upon returning to New York after her first visit to China, Soraya Broukhim provides a review of Wang Qingsong’s "When World's Collide" exhibition of photographs and videos at ICP. (Read more)
Upon returning to New York after her first visit to China, Soraya Broukhim provides a review of Wang Qingsong’s "When World's Collide" exhibition of photographs and videos at ICP. (Read more)
CONVERSATIONS: Ellen Pearlman on Lin Jingjing at Songzhuang Art Center
Ellen Pearlman, New York-based writer and editor of the Brooklyn Rail who lives part time in China, reviews “I Want to Be With You Forever,” the first solo exhibition by young female artist Lin Jingjing. Though curated by well-known critic Li Xianting, this exhibition is somewhat outside of the Chinese contemporary art establishment: presented in Songzhuang (an artist village on the outskirts of Beijing), featuring an emerging artist, an emphasis on a craft-based practice, and an explicit use of feminist tropes.
“I Want to Be With You Forever,” Solo exhibition by Lin Jingjing, curated by Li Xianting
Nov 25 – Dec 14 2009
Songzhuang Art Museum, Tongzhou, Beijing
Five years in the making, Lin Jingjing’s solo show at the Songzhuan Art Center uses videos, photographs and sculptural installations to examine the two narrow stages allotted to fertile women in China – two archetypal characters I have nicknamed “Foxy” and “Forgotten.” In squeamish detail, Lin shows the moment of marital transformation where the “Fox” is deflowered to become “Forgotten.” In a slow motion video, a needle is thrust deep into the folds of a perfect rose bud sewn shut and stitched down before it is given the chance to bloom. This piercing fall from virginal grace gives way to multiple issues of memory, loss and alienation.
The mainstream Chinese advertising industry emphasizes the happy moment of nuptial bliss as the ultimate goal in a woman’s life, and Lin deconstructs this in her installation “I Want To Be With You Forever,” consisting of 300 wedding photos from 300 couples. The brides are cut out of the picture and sewn onto the top of 300 toy white canopy beds. Brides sliced out of the picture renders them unable to connect with their intended, a commentary on the fallacy of their idealized situation. “Never Apart” takes 75 cheap glass and chrome picture frames and slices the bride and groom apart, leaving them to gaze lovingly at empty images or shards of reflections of themselves. “I Want To Fly” is a series of cotton books where the main character is cut out of the photo and their outline is sewn up. Their original image is placed on an adjoining page, completely out of context, symbolizing the sad reality that they can leave China only in their fantasy. They are trapped in their environment and only by floating on fluffy dream cloud can they be free.
Lin’s photographic series “Dress” is a damning indictment of woman-as-perfect hymen. Using long stemmed red roses, she shoves the flowers into suggestive poses inside both empty dresses and stretched out lace panties, creating a bold statement against the reductive ontology of woman as reproductive muse. In her mixed-media series of the same name, she frames perfect white wedding dresses inlaid with puff-ball clutches of eggs against a background of multiple cut outs of Japanese sex toy dolls in lewd positions.
The question of what happens to all these beauties, these oozing eggs and luscious roses once they begin to fade and wither, is examined in “Private Memory,” a bulky wooden card-catalog whose draws have been pulled out and scattered about. What is left behind are sepia photos with cut out faces lying on bundles of fluffy white cotton. “Nobody Knows I Was There, Nobody Knows I Was Not There,” a series of 160 CCTV News photo images cut and stitched onto tin boxes continues this scene of absence, memory, and validation of self. With just one individual in the photograph cut out and removed, it raises the question: would the world be any different if that individual did not exist? These kind of questions show the direction Lin’s work is moving towards, one that deepens the discussion of what it means to be human in these rapidly changing times.