Right Hand

Right Hand was created by Xiang Jing between 2015 and 2016, and it is part of the S series. As Jonathan has said, this work “consists of six right arms, each a tour-de-force of expressive gesture like the famous hand studies of Rodin, who famously pioneered the partial figure.” In terms of esthetic paradigms, Xiang Jing engages here in a parody of the corporeal language based on the conservative “heroic view of history”; but in terms of form, she has rendered these forms mundane and average.

Despite the absence of torsos, the hand gestures possess narrative qualities that inspire the viewer to imagine the experiences of the people to whom these arms and hands belong, and here this work transcends experience. Gestures are a powerful expressive language. Just as the Bible speaks metaphorically of the right hand of God as a symbol of God’s omnipotence and righteousness, many politicos like to gesture with their right hands to display their charismatic qualities of leadership. In 2003, Sui Jianguo made a work entitled Study of Clothes Veins—Right Arm. This piece employed the language of monuments to systematically recreate the discursive form of power, so that viewers would know instantly which politician this right arm belongs to.

Although Xiang Jing has admitted that, in some sense, Right Hand was inspired by Sui Jianguo, she does not employ the language of monuments. On the contrary, these six naked arms use a much more physical language, and they look much more like the right arms of ordinary people. This detailed method of representation conveys more plot, narrative, and subjective colorations. While the right hand may symbolize power and strength, Xiang Jing’s Right Hand represents an attempt to draw the viewer into a paradigm whereby experience resides in the body—this is what Jonathan means when he uses the term “expressionistic.”

In Right Hand, the six right arms, each of which makes a different shape, are arranged in a row that describes an “s” curve—it’s as if there was only one arm, continuously moving and naturally making a wavy line. These dynamic icons are like a slow-motion movie, broken down, frame by frame, into a sequence of still images, made up of discursive icons. These strung-together poses are an experiment in the presentation of continuous movement, as opposed to a collection of discrete still “moments.” Xiang Jing had attempted to do this in Whole Dark in a Twinkling; but in the S series, her ambition extends beyond experimenting with ways to use the static art of sculpture to represent movement: if the right arm is present now, then the body is the as yet unspoken “presence that is not present”—the idea embodied in Right Hand is that the human desire for power is the impetus behind people’s ceaseless drive for existence.

(written by Mao Zhu)