Blurred line between fact and fiction

In milan, a beijing photographic artist shows how far she has traveled

Xing Danwen portrays drama, emotions and dreams, all through a camera. She mixes fact and fiction to reveal a larger reality. In China, she was one of the first artists to explore the boundaries of photography, transcending its limits.

"I have been taking photographs for 25 years now," says Xing. She is a softly-spoken Chinese woman who has been achieving enormous success in Europe with her innovative art.

To Xing, photographs are not vehicles for depicting the obvious. She uses photography to ponder questions that cannot be easily answered.

Aware of the force of visual language, Xing's approach is almost charged with miraculous power. Through her work, she interprets a reality that needs healing, and demands a creative transformation of consciousness from the viewer.

The Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, have some of her works on permanent display. In the Unites States, the International Center of Photography and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, have several works from her most important series.

Xing, 46, is a self-taught photographer who was born in Xi'an, where initially she studied painting at the local academy of fine arts. She continued her studies at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where she obtained a bachelor of fine arts.

Xing's Milan retrospective exhibition, which runs until June 28, is surprising because it shows how far she has travelled formally, from the social documentary work of her early years to the later experimental video art installations.

"Her themes include the conflict between globalization and traditions, problematic environmental issues created by rapid development, the urban drama between desire and reality," says curator Silvia Cinelli. "Fiction, truth and illusion often play important roles."

In 2001, Xing returned to China to make one of her most renowned series, Disconnexion, in which mobile phones, computers, toys and wires of various kinds are taken out of context and presented creatively.

The Milan show is an acknowledgment of Xing's willingness to take risks in her artistic work and not to shy away from creating pictures that ask awkward questions about how we see and interpret the world through photography.

"Every time I question how artists make photographs of the world," she says. But most of all, she questions how this world really is.

Xing is also exhibiting her work in Lisbon, at the Museu do Oriente.

"Beijing is my home; nowhere else is good enough," she says. "It's the only city where I can really feel at home. I grew up in Beijng, which represents the starting point of my career. All my struggles started from there, in a very particular historical time.

"Beijing is a very international city, an extremely interesting and stimulating place because of its cultural complexity. It is the most exciting place I know. Well, except perhaps New York. The majority of Chinese artists live in Beijing. My life is very settled here. I don't know if I would ever leave Beijing as I built up my roots there.

"I love New York. It's the global megalopolis par excellence and it is still the city of opportunities for any kind of artist. I came back to Beijing not because I didn't feel comfortable in New York. It was simply a question of love, because of my boyfriend being in Beijing, but sadly we are no longer together."

In New York, Xing first experienced a sense of loneliness, a theme that is very much present in her work, together with the sense of disorientation.

"That frightened me beyond belief," she says.

Xing's work still conveys a sense of loneliness and drama and uses both urban and personal space that are hallmarks of a hyper-technological society.

"Humans are not meant to be alone; it is natural to crave human companionship," she says. "But loneliness, nowadays, is a fact, a phenomenon in larger cities.

"In this sense, Beijing is having the same problems as New York, which is well known as a city of singles. This affects the lives of everyone in big cities."

In another well known series, Urban Fiction, however, loneliness is no longer a problem. In this work, Xing explores how human beings can deal with loneliness. "It depends on your attitude toward loneliness. You must consider yourself as your own partner; you need to find in yourself your own 'angel of love', become a single/alone and not lonely.

"I have reached that kind of state. I enjoy being alone very much now. Yes, I have transformed loneliness into solitude."

But Beijing "doesn't do so well in environmental performance", she says. "Pollution is the current problem. It can affect your health, while the continuous expansion of the city into a 'mega-metropolis' is creating another issue: human isolation."

Xing endorses President Xi Jinping's reforms. "I really appreciate his efforts, his courageous reforms which involve an enormous financial investment. I think Xi is truly bringing about radical changes in Chinese society. Looking at what he is doing, I am optimistic. He is fighting against environmental problems and corruption. He is very much determined to confront these issues head on."

Xing left a solid career in painting to embrace photography. "I didn't even have a camera at the beginning. I didn't even have enough money to buy one," she recalls. "So, one day, when I was 17, I bought a photography magazine instead. It contained a couple of pictures that really impressed me, especially a very original black and white picture that triggered my love for photography."

Asked what she thinks about the current trend of taking and sharing "selfies" online, she says with a laugh: "Well, this is the hyper-visual century, isn't it? With the advent of digital technology, pictures have become truly instantaneous. Everything has moved so fast. It seems that everyone wants to show off and share their looks online, even with strangers."

Huawei even makes a smartphone with "instant facial beauty support", software that reduces wrinkles and blemishes.

"Taking 'selfies', as an exercise in recording private moments has become the simplest thing in the world now, but creating art images implies a profound thinking process," Xing says. "Here lies the difference between good artwork and mass media photography."

The basic questions Xing asks herself before beginning a project, are: "Why am I doing this? What are my purposes and intentions? Where do I draw the line? Photography is a vehicle to do art, not a destination."

How does Xing's lens describe this world? "I don't limit my work to the use of a lens. I talk about reality through fiction, which can be a sum of your imagination, fantasy, emotions or dreams."

When she goes out with a camera does she have a plan? "Actually, I don't carry my camera with me anymore. I changed my way of working in the 90s. I begin the creative process in my mind first. Spending time in my thoughts is fundamental. An idea sits inside me for a while, and then emerges. Only after acquiring a clear idea of what I want to express, I seek images that serve my mind best. Taking pictures is just the final step."

Xing is working on several new works.

"I am currently working on various projects, especially on a topic that is hugely important for me personally," she says. "It is all about how we can survive this hyper-developed urban life, with all these cars running around, all the traffic fumes, which give our present day a sort of Armageddon-ish feel.

"Since I am getting older, I have become more motivated in investigating the basic things in life, such as love, suffering, value-based happiness. I am trying to nurture my own vision of the essential values in life. Life is a list of complicated issues that affect us both emotionally and physically."

Her new work, I Can't Feel What I Feel, clearly expresses this point of view. The obvious subject here is that the existence of pain and suffering is a constant in the human experience. Here, Xing finds inspiration in traditional Chinese medicine, which states that our bodies show problems exactly where blood circulation, our energy, get stuck.

I Can't Feel What I Feel is a provocative video installation that generates a reaction, a metaphor, a critical point on the profound vulnerability of human beings.

"Sometimes we cause our own problems, often through not taking enough care of ourselves," she says. "Maybe, we are driven to self-destruction."

The way out?

"That's a really good question," she says shyly. "The problem with human beings is endless desire."

China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 05/09/2014 page29)