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Jiang Zhi is a Shengzhen-based artist in China.
A single theme, media or material is not enough to satisfy one’s creativity. That’s why I try to develop different subjects at the same time, using various media and materials. My interest in “light” started in 2005. There were far too many neon lights in the southern city I was living in. It inspired me to use a large number of neon signs to form a gorgeous rainbow stretching over the skyline of the city. They constituted a magical landscape of the metropolis. I’d like to think of this series of work as a reverse fairy tale. The sparkling lights inevitably became the visual focus of a market utopia. Now I continue to explore the theme “light” with spotlights and fireworks.
The video installation Onward! Onward! Onward! (2006) features three actors who look like three former leaders of China running forward. It questions the one-way direction taken by national politics and economy, which at the same time represent an overbearing national desire. For me, “onward” has a very similar connotation as “light.”
Meanwhile, I have been working on something seemingly crueler: making a series of installations using what looks like bare naked skin but in fact is made of silicon and red woolen threads. The series I Am Your Poetry No. 5—Strip Dancer is not sexy at all. This piece, molded from an old Crown Victoria, describes a story about a traffic collision, about sin and violence, about a continuous entanglement of city life, desire, sin, and flesh. In I Am Your Poetry No. 9—I Give You All the Looks, inside the delicate yet ice-cold glass boxes lies not expensive jewelry but transparent skin-like human body part—facial features, palms, breasts and so on. They appear to be awe-inspiringly beautiful in the soft light. It is an exploration into the possibilities of material as well as a transformation of fashion and body, but most importantly, a satire of consumerism and freedom. The piece I Am Your Poetry No. 10—The Angel’s Skin is pretty self-explanatory: pieces of skin stripped from angels. While you may wonder where the angels went, it seems that they have escaped from their bodies, leaving only their skin behind.
