Performance without Mask

              —Interview with Jia Aili

Venue: Studio of Jia Aili, Beigao

Time: July 20, 2008

Interviewer: Ding Xiaojie

Translator: Nicole Chen

The Enlarged Loneliness

Art Map: In your picture, figure only occupies a small space while the area of the background is large. It’s like a kind of enlarged loneliness. Is this your intentional arrangement?

Jia: It’s unintentional. You see I work in my studio and it’s an endless job. I have no plan, no logic and no prior arrangement. I paint without the direction of logic. It’s like my bedroom, no logic, always a mess. I think I lack this kind of logic.

Art Map: Do you think your paintings are related to the places or environments you used to live in? The large-scale machines you paint in the picture give the audience a very “northern” feeling. It seems they can add a desolated feeling to the picture.

Jia: Yes, I think so. It’s like the Russian paintings always showing the scene of snow. Why don’t they show some people in bikini running along the beach? Because they don’t have such a kind of life.

When I worked in Shenyang, my studio was in Tiexi District. Have you ever watched “Tiexi District” directed by Wang Bing? I was in such a heavy, iron-and-steel-liked environment. It’s just like that. I’ve been to other cities in China, but they don’t have that kind of feeling. The cities I’ve been to, such as Shenyang, Fushun, Anshan and Benxi in Dongbei Province, all have an excessive content of metal.

Art Map: In some of your works you paint lakes and seas. Is this because they convey an unknown content and they can more easily express the lonely part of your heart.

Jia: I think watching the sea makes people feel relaxed, but the result turns out to be the contrary. Frankly speaking, I meant to paint it in a way that could comfort people. However, the result was not like that. Then if people saw them, they would say that I had painted it too melancholy. Actually I didn’t think it that way. I just wanted to find an exit for me to relax a little and not to think of anything. But you will find it very difficult when you do try to complete it. Are people the ones who control art? Sometimes they really aren’t, because no one can control his art.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Art Map: Many people see your paintings and feel you are trying to avoid something. It’s a secret avoidance, isn’t it?

Jia: Yes, I avoid too many things. What are they? Not only painting, I avoid anything, including work, job, entering the society and communicate with other people with a social identity.

Art Map: So you set up many scenes, like intruding into a gray Utopia.

Jia: In fact it’s just so so. When I was in school, I learned classical painting, i.e. traditional portraits. What I paint now is different from what I learned at that time. If I painted what I paint now in school, it would be another story.

Art Map: Is academic education a pressure for you? Do you want to resist anything because of it?

Jia: If I give you a disc of my exercise works to see, you can’t finish it in an hour. They are different sorts of human bodies, portraits and things like that.

I think there was a short period of time that I had a kind of resistant mentality, but after that there was nothing. Then I had a very strong “self-mentality” for a short period of time-several months perhaps. At that time there was an academic committee in every school. Before graduation, I prepared to stay at school and be a teacher. Therefore, the committee would pay more attention on your works, even your political status. During that period of time I had a short and passive rebelling mentality. Now I don’t care about that any more. Now I can restrict myself more liberally.

Art Map: However, can losing this pressure really make you feel more comfortable and free? Have you had new confusion?

Jia: It’s just like what Milan Kundera describes in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. When you have no restrictions, you actually feel more uncomfortable. Sometimes I don’t know what should do in a day. I really don’t know.

It’s been a year since I came to Beijing, but I feel I have no life. I’ve stayed in Shenyang for so many years. After graduation, I also worked in Shenyang. I rented a studio in Tiexi District and painted everyday. I had no life at that time. Everyday I just painted. I loved painting at that time. Unlike now, I just don’t want to paint for a part of time. This year I’m not in a good status and I don’t want to paint. At that time I loved to paint and couldn’t live without painting. Now I also work for a long time, but it is a kind of inertia.

At the very first beginning, I came to Beijing just to get away from the status I had in Shenyang. I came in search of life. I usually worked at night and slept for the most part of a day. I got up in the afternoon. I got exited after the dawn or at midnight. When I was in Shenyang, it was silent at night. You felt your world was incompatible with the world around you. I thought in Beijing, people were like me and that’s why I came to Beijing. I thought I could get rid of that loneliness. But the result turned out to be the same. Every weekend there are some opening cocktail parities where groups of lonely people gather, afraid of the end of the parties.

“Process” rather than “Result”

Art Map: After “mask”, do you have any conception or work taken in shape in your new creation?

Jia: There’s something in my mind. There are also some shadows in the small paintings upstairs. Anyway I won’t paint mask any more. I can now review the faces and expressions of those people. When I went to university and graduated from it, I couldn’t face those expressions and paint them directly. You can also feel that. Therefore I made them take off all the clothes and cover their faces. Everyone in the picture wears a mask.

In fact that time gave me a chance. It protected me for so long and enabled me to work in this way. Otherwise I couldn’t go on with even this work. That’s why I put on a mask. It can keep my identity or way of work in a relatively numb status. In a word, it protects me. Three years passed and I continue painting all the way.

Art Map: Can you talk about the general change in your new exhibition in November?

Jia: I will try everything possible to show my recent mentality and idea in my new exhibition in November. It may not be a profitable exhibition, but it will be an exhibition that the gallery and I all put a lot of energy in it. We both want to express a kind of emotion and faith, which is something other than the so-called superficial art circles of today. Maybe there are not many works to sell in the end. There may be one, even one unfinished work. But I only want to express directly what I can express, even if there’s only a little to express. I think I have a more positive mentality this year. Now that I show my works to the audience, I should be as honest as possible. But maybe this exhibition will be hard to prepare. Perhaps there will be few works, even one piece of work. Even if it’s not successful, it’s ok. This solo exhibition is not meant for success. Now it’s only in the plan. In a word, it is not meant for the people to see the final result. I think if all the people in our circles take the result too seriously, it will cause many people to take the wrong road. Now we don’t pay enough attention to the process. We should see the process calmly and normally with a comparatively moderate attitude.