Portrait of the Other No.13, Portrait of the Other, No.14,Xia Xiaowan, "The Section of Experimental Art at the 15th National Art Exhibition"

The artist paints details of one image separately on several sheets of transparent glasses, he then arrange these glass sheets in layers to form a spatial painting. This is an experiment of transforming a two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional installation in space.
The series of “the Portrait of the Other,” is a collection of portraits of mysterious creatures, the artificial pseudo-men, the image sources of which come from various civilizations and places throughout history. The imaginative images of a pseudo-man construct a superman-like figure that has a human look but has superior abilities. The creations of such imaginative figures have been found along the development of human history, and they function as leaders of our mental world and avatars of super-life. Their existence has become a recurrent social phenomenon.
The mysterious portrait distorted reflections of the glass, resembles those faces, not pretty but with a strong visual impact, such as the Ugly Arhat under Monk Guanxiu’s brushes, who is ugly look but possesses great wisdom and sympathy. The distorted face in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, is another example of strong visual impacts, as the face has fully expressed emotional struggles for survival in the society. The ghost-like portraits in this series are more of visual profiles of mental peculiarities hidden in our unconsciousness, than a collective portrait of ghost and monster imagery collected through history. Because the goal of the artist is to explore our internal minds, and therefore, the work transcends representation of exoticism, but presents a scientific investigation for the inner truth.