Jiaming You is attuned to what it means to be a nomad, having her art first of all shifted back and forth between China and the United States. At “Cultural Nomad” showing in 4C Gallery; a group exhibition featuring You and four other Chinese artists in the US, the air of awareness of foreign bodies in foreign spaces being watched by foreign eyes is palpable. You “collects” imagery from the places she has passed through and the memories she has lived through.
In the installation pieces Scarlet (2022) and One Pound (2022) there is a parallel of the external space and the interior space of the remembering mind as she recreates her memories of locations into places people will themselves experience and in turn remember. One Pound features stills from a Japanese science-fiction animation, printed on clear sheets of plastic suspended from the wall, from chains, a punching bag and a boxer’s glove are suspended. A bringing together of fantastical machines and earthly violence, You conjures to mind fictions of memory but the reality of happening. Scarlet, the other installation is literally a trick window- an illusion of a space beyond the wall, bathed in deep red. It is only a photograph but the recognizability of a strange neon place, with closed doors brings forth the language of walking through the streets. What is this place? Our mind wanders to the grittier corners of indistinct cities we remember. The assumptions we make.
You revels in this ambiguity, we recognize things here and there but we are struck with how unfamiliar familiarity can become, it is in kind a nomadic memory. Born in China but have lived in multiple countries and now pursuing a career in Chicago, IL, You offers a unique perspective as a kind of living glass which magnifies, distorts, and reflects its surroundings and its viewers. Scarlet plays on the stereotype of East Asian immigrants with their grimy, shady massage parlors with what could very well simply be a red sign, not a red light. One Pound requires a kind of mental library of Japanese animation to realize the stranger in a strange land relationship between the Chinese artist and the Japanese film stills. To the viewer they are striking objects which cling onto fragmented memories of things seen past, the objects provoke whoever sees them.
You continues in the show with her painted works which occupy an impressive space- largely from their combination of the painted craft and the remembered object which she so deftly narrates. Face Off (2023), embroils the typical hokey image of multicultural sportsmen in very real racial violence. The identity of the figures are ambiguous, to us they are defined only by their racial characteristics- a flash of white skin, a flash of brown skin. They fall into what seems like an abyss of color, like the whole gladiator show of hockey has swallowed them into their own hell. Hockey brawls, such an iconic sight to the mass media culture of the North Americas, here it serves as an isolating, alien experience. Violence as violence is; stark, desperate, and undignified. The common whiteness we associate with hockey, creates a kind of narrative from the viewer’s expectation of an outsider fighting for a space, only to be fought down and strangled down. But in the racial violence, there is an equal sense of loss. There are no winners here.
Feather Jacket (2023), forgoes canvas in favor of a NO HUNTING sign, something so iconoclastically American- it even boasts a MADE IN AMERICA mark peeking through the corner. You crafts a dramatic irony, as a sign meant to prevent killing becomes a showcase of violence, a pale, clammy hand strangles someone. The sign obscured as if its plea was ignored. The victim is game to the unseen hunter, with nowhere left but empty promises from empty signs. You paints with bold, stunningly confident strokes which illuminate and obscure; identities seem ambiguous but in the spaces inbetween You finds her surest footing; we are strangers in a strange land, nations unto ourselves, watching and remembering the things that pass us by.
About Author:
Mo Gyeong Seong is a writer and filmmaker based in Chicago. He has written about the materiality of religion in Korean Buddhist cinema and is fascinated with the daily lives of human beings. He is the Head of Writing and Interpretations at W. Gallery, a contemporary arts gallery based in Chicago which he helped co-found.
