In today’s era of multiculturalism and identity diversity, art is more a testament to the artist's identity and its power. Art in its diverse configurations—the Global South, gender minorities, the postcolonial, and others—reveal a sense of expectation and imagination regarding their own place in the future.
Yet this rich discourse surrounding multiculturalism and identity diversity has, to a certain extent, obscured art's own developmental trajectory—the very logical impulse that gave rise to contemporary art. Xiong Jiaxiang, by contrast, deliberately establishes a connection between contemporary art and its distant origins. His is a mode of creation that treats art itself as a condition of existence, unfolding through the artist’s very way of being.
Through the formality, spirituality, and symbolism of the "square," Xiong Jiaxiang imaginatively bridges contemporary diverse concerns—makeup, the body, social identity—with the essential questions of art. And yet, this effort to connect the spiritual origins of contemporary art with contemporaneity reveals itself as incompatible, incoherent, and fractured. It is precisely through this fracture that he mounts a critique of modernity and its linear logic: the discontinuity between the contemporary and the modern is brought into sharp relief, compelling us to reconsider what art is.
