Be Kind to Melancholy, That Big Loyal Dog

Be Kind to Melancholy, That Big Loyal Dog, created by Xiang Jing between 2013 and 2016, is part of the S series. If the S series is an attempt to construct a narrative about desire, then Be Kind to Melancholy, That Big Loyal Dog can be seen as a narrative of the flipside of desire. In Xiang Jing’s view, desire and depression are inversely proportional to one another; both are vital forces intrinsic to human nature and residing in its deepest recesses. However, if desire can be seen as the impulse towards aspiration and striving, then depression is the process whereby desire is diminished and declines.

Xiang Jing takes this disheartening story and situates it in what appears to be a very ordinary and commonplace set of domestic relationships: a man, a woman, and a large dog. A closer look reveals plentiful signs that everything is not in fact normal: the man seems listless and not really present, and he’s wearing a strange set of tight fitting long underwear; the woman is completely naked, and her head is buried in the floor as if she is somehow broken off her relationship with the world or is trying to hide from something; the big, black dog for its part is larger than life-size—it is a “big loyal dog,” a phrase that reads like the man’s interior monologue. Here, “melancholy” appears to have replaced the theme of death that Xiang Jing was enthralled with in her earlier work. She moves the point of view to those sensitive and fragile emotions that lie deep in human nature—hidden from view, they are not fatal, but they are extremely intense. Commenting on this, Xiang Jing has written, “Depression is like plunging into the deep well of human nature; it’s also like a skylight that opens up onto the space beyond loneliness. I have concealed the subject of depression within a man, a woman, and a dog. This sort of family group is analogous to the hidden nature of depression. Melancholy and pleasure are two opposite sides of humanity.” In the S series, Xiang Jing strives to expand the dimensions of narrative beyond individual experience and a subjective point of view; this work does not take a male perspective, nor does it take a female one. Anyone can look in the mirror and become the subject. (written by Mao Zhu)