Artist: Jiang Jie

Date: October 2, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Open Space hosted an artistic talk with  Jiang Jie, one of the leading sculptors currently working in China. Jiang Jie is Associate Professor of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Her most famous works are larger-than-life sculptures of babies. Several of Jie’s recent works have combined babies’ or children’s faces with adults’ facial expressions, suggesting a universality that transcends age, but also the things babies cannot say and that which adults cannot understand. “I work with images of children and babies because people react instinctively to them,” Jiang said in one interview. “I want to use my artwork to discuss problems of humanity. I want to reflect deep issues that we deal with in society.”
Jiang’s babies are an alarming yet intriguing study into the emptiness and distortion that devours youthful innocence in a capitalist society. Jiang’s work is simultaneously ugly and beautiful, sacred and profane.

Xi Chuan, the Orion Visiting Asian Artist, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, will act as translator.

Jiang Jie will also present a lecture on Contemporary Women Artists in China at the University of Victoria on October 6, 8pm, Rm A162 Visual Arts Building.