Asia

Jiang Zhi

5

2012

5, 2012 (video still)

Jiang Zhi’s 5 is a three-channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration. The main video features two dancers intertwining, caressing in trancelike movements, with intimacy eventually leading to scarring and bleeding. Towards the end, the trace of bodily movements and fluids crescendo in an image of a skull in a synthesis of performance, painting, and theater. To the artist, the skull of smeared fluid can be considered an allegory to Zygmunt Mauman’s concept of “liquid love,” where the loosening up of traditional bonds becomes possible due to increased social mobility. Modernity forces one to make provisional bonds that are more fluid and liquid in nature as many are torn between freedom and security. Thus, stricken by a liquid love, the amorous protagonists of the piece, enraptured in a fluxus of pain and eros, unable to transcend duality, leave only an image of passion and death in the final tableau.

Jiang Zhi represents a generation of artists whose practice developed against the backdrop of experimental art in China in the 1990s, during which a series of social and cultural transformation occurred in the country. His work actively deals with issues such as body, gender, identity, consumerism, conflict, fear, power, and temporality, and often involves recent social events. Jiang attended the China Academy of Art and has long been engaged with writing and video art. From 1995 to 2005, Jiang was also an active journalist, which had him on the frontlines of his country’s the social transformation, and all of his experiences have deeply influenced the language and context of his practice. Constantly positioning himself at the intersection between brutal reality and poetic imagination, Jiang’s works presents a complex trajectory of the artist’s everyday life and society at large.

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Jiang Zhi 5

Jiang Zhi

5