Jing Su in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist
Damaris Athene: Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?
Jing Su: My name is Jing Su (Chinese: 苏静). I am a visual artist. I am currently based in London. My studio is in Westminster. I was born in Inner Mongolia, China.
DA: Did you come to London to study?
JS: In 2014 I arrived in London and began studying English as I did not speak any English. I got the opportunity to study illustration at Camberwell College of Arts and graduated in 2017. After that I had various opportunities including internships at galleries, commissions, projects and so forth. I decided to apply for a Masters course at the Royal College of Art and was accepted, this allowed me to focus my research and art practice.
DA: But then you changed from illustration, didn't you? What was the name of the MA that you did?
JS: It's called Contemporary Art Practice. The Illustration course at Camberwell is very open and similar in many respects to a Fine Art course, so it wasn’t a huge change. I was more interested in the living conditions of an artist in London. After my undergraduate I took a one year education gap and during this time I made a decision to challenge myself and try new things. The course doesn’t limit you at all so I applied and I was in the Public Sphere pathway, where basically we discuss societal issues.
DA: And that's what interests you the most?
JS: Yeah, for me it’s interesting because I want to understand how we live in our society. What can we discuss about it and what is the social function of art.
DA: That’s something I find really interesting too and that leads nicely onto you saying a bit more about your practice and the ideas you explore, and also the mediums that you use.
JS: My practice is focused on challenging the perception of the female condition and the impact of technology or living in a multimedia way. I use various media such as painting, video, photography, sculpture, and ceramics. I am a multidisciplinary artist where concepts inform the process of my work.
DA: What initially drew you to making work about the body, especially control over women's bodies in the medical field?
JS: At the beginning of the autumn in 2018 I fell ill and I had to go into hospital in London to have an operation. This experience was incredibly unpleasant and I was told that I could get cancer if I did not cooperate. It was an intense time for me and this drove me to reference this experience in my work. When I rejected my male doctor's suggestion, he was still trying to convince me to have an operation by saying, “Oh, we can still do this procedure when you are having your period” and saying a lot of scary words as well. In that moment I saw that he only faced the disease space and I saw my body become a separate pathological space under this medical gaze and my voice disappear gradually inside this medical treatment.
GIVE, 2020, still from HD digital video
Photo courtesy of the artist
DA: So you experienced a lack of autonomy or control over your own body?
JS: Yeah, and the communication as well.
DA: Did you ever deal with any female doctors in your time in hospital?
JS: The consultant was a female doctor sometimes. The surgeon, who was the most important doctor, was male. My female consultant told me that he was the one of the best surgeons for this kind of procedure.
DA: That must have been so difficult, especially being in another country as well.
JS: I was in a lot of shock. I had just started my study at the Royal College of Art.
DA: That sounds awful! Did you have to delay your course at all?
JS: No, I didn’t. This is why I used this profound experience in my practice.
DA: That’s amazing you were able to still carry on with your masters! I was really interested in the combination of references that you have in GIVE, your series of moving image works that you had in your degree show. This mirroring and distortion of the human body, creating these alien hybrid forms and almost bacterial like multiplication of the body. It was making me think of the history of feminist sci-fi writing and the way that that can reimagine societal structures and ways of living. Then these emojis are spewing out to the body like confetti, and they're celebratory, and kitsch, but kind of obscene and gross, sort of like bodily fluids leaking out. I was interested in what your references were for this body of work and what kind of things you were drawing on? Sorry it's a long question!
JS: Yeah, but it's a very good question. When I made these videos it's based on my experience and I was thinking about meditation. I would rather make something playful than didactic. I was thinking about the audience. Sometimes when I talk about my experience, I've found it quite harrowing and I find it can be a bit over sharing as well. I don't feel great to talk about again and again like I had a bad experience at the hospital. So I don’t want to tell people some really harrowing story. I tried to make it fun using the female body. I don't really remember how many different video clips I created. I made a collage of impressions and divided it into 13 videos, where I create a fictional space. We can explore and question clinical representations of the female human body but in a playful way.
GIVE 2, 2020, HD digital video
Video courtesy the artist
DA: What made you choose emojis to do that? Was it just the light hearted nature of them?
JS: I think it was spontaneous really, because emojis are very common for people chatting, for communication. It's quite informal as well and they transcend language barriers. I wanted to bring some humour into the videos also.
DA: I love them! I think it works really well. The contrast between the emojis and the weird bodily form works really well.
JS: Thank you. I'm really glad that you enjoyed GIVE. I’ve been told that some people find they're too much.
DA: That’s interesting. Would those same people not like seeing the body sexualised? Because it's seeing the body in such a different way. It's almost like the body as its own life form without any kind of person connected to it, rather than this hyper-sexualised female body, which we see every day in advertisements.
JS: Yeah, I didn't have an intention to talk about sexuality or beauty standards.
DA: What was the process for making them? There’s a stark background and then it looks like you've done a lot of digital editing or CGI on the top? Did you film your body in a studio?
JS: The process is quite long and I did a lot of filming. The human bodies are all organic and came from filming in a studio. Then I would edit the films in After Effects. I had another video work, which is talking about agriculture. I was filming in the countryside and the films felt quite homemade. I need a lot of equipment for the editing, a very powerful screen. I cannot make the work using my own laptop.
DA: How long did it take to edit them?
JS: The editing process was relatively fast. However, I spent a very long time thinking about how to make the work.
DA: And is it your own body? Or was it a friend that you used to film?
JS: Unfortunately, it was me. My plan was to find a model. I had an image in my mind of white skin, because I like to see the veins and it's really beautiful as well. Because of the pandemic I didn't have the chance to have a model.
GIVE, 2020, still from HD digital video
Photo courtesy of the artist
DA: Has that changed the way that you view the work, or change your relationship to your body in any way?
JS: To be honest it hasn't changed my relationship to my body because when I filmed myself I was absorbed in the process. I didn't really think about the fact that I’m filming myself. I was literally treating myself like an object. If I had found a model it would have been a more enjoyable process, because I can't be totally outside of it when it’s me.
DA: Are you planning to develop the ideas more for this body of work?
JS: Yeah, I would like to talk about this with you when you visit my studio next time.
DA: I was also interested that you'd read Maggie Nelson's book, the Argonauts and I wondered what effect that had had on your research and your practice?
JS: I got that book when I was doing my dissertation. It's a piece of writing using Autotheory, using autobiographical material to challenge theoretical frameworks. The term hasn't been defined yet, but it's often used in feminist practice. Autotheory is a way to make the personal become political, the subjective experience challenges the perception of objective realities. I engage in empowerment ideologies to show the reality of structural oppression still operating on women. Autotheory helped me to understand the relationship between me and the power in the institution.
DA: That's so interesting, I think it's a brilliant book and I really enjoyed reading it myself. I was also wondering how you usually work and how that's been affected by the pandemic?
JS: Usually I work at a studio but not during the lockdowns. I have had a few online exhibitions and worked with emerging curators, through emails and Zoom. I think it was fun to have a virtual group show and get to know people through the internet or social media. It’s a totally new experience for me, Also, to learn to be adaptable for the current situation. It's nice to take a break from time to time. I found the pandemic slowed down my life as well.
DA: That’s nice to hear it’s had some positives. What's your earliest memory of an experience with art?
JS: My grandparents used to run a very big restaurant that was filled with amazing Chinese painting and calligraphy. I remember they were so powerful, fascinating and poetic.
GIVE 3, 2020, HD digital video
Video courtesy of the artist
DA: What a lovely memory! And whose art inspires you now?
JS: I like Es Devlin, Rebecca Ackroyd, Saelia Aparicio, Marianna Simnett, Holly Herndon, Rene Matić. Saelia made lots of transfers of the human body to monsters or creatures by discussing our body condition. I really liked those works and, to be honest, I'm not sure they have inspired me, but I really like their work. We don’t explore the same topics.
DA: But things can inspire on so many different levels, can't they? You know, it can be someone who does work that you actually hate and that can end up informing how you make your own work in some way.
JS: Yeah, definitely.
DA: I’m a huge fan of Marianna Simnett! Her work has got such a dark side to it and dark humour. I can definitely see that connection to the work that you make.
JS: Thank you. I really like the way she films.
DA: Do you know the work of Kate Cooper?
JS: Yeah I saw her work at Hayward Gallery in 2019 and have her book.
DA: Snap!
JS: I like the quality of her video as well. It's very beautiful.
DA: Yeah, really beautiful. The CGI women are in this weird non space, a white void, which I see in your work as well.
JS: Thank you very much. I would like to make something simulated. I would like to use CGI.
DA: That'd be cool! What projects have you been working on recently?
JS: Recently, I have had some online exhibitions. I showed work with Do It Your Way on Instagram. Also, I have been spending my time learning Python during the lockdowns. It was a live course, not a recorded lecture. I was the worst student in my group, because I was the only one that didn’t come from a computer background. I did ask a lot of illogical questions because it's so new to me. I'm passionate about everything digital, as my experience involves producing digital art.
GIVE, 2020, stills from HD digital video
Photo courtesy of the artist
DA: What will you use Python to do? What will you be coding?
JS: I learned website development basically, and also using the code to make the pictures. Really simple 2D animation. I think it's good to take a break and learn how to take advantage of computers. It doesn't have to work immediately on my art practice, but it might be useful in the future, who knows where it takes you. It's a journey!
DA: What plans do you have for future work?
JS: I’m looking forward to the lockdowns ending because I would like to go to Berlin enormously. I want to go to galleries and clubs, I like techno. This is the first thing I would like to do once I feel safe to travel. I hope I can do an artist residency in Berlin, to maintain video practice with music/sound. This is what I have been waiting for.
DA: Nice. So are the videos for ‘GIVE’ meant to have sound? The SoundCloud link wasn't working when I watched them.
JS: Yeah there’s a technical issue. I uploaded the music last year around July 2020 to the RCA platform, but this platform is not stable I am afraid to say. It's a very new online platform I cannot edit by myself.
DA: Did you make the music yourself?
JS: I made it collaboratively with another artist called Milo Creese. He made the sound for my videos.
DA: Ah, nice. Well, thank you so much, Jing. So lovely to meet you.
JS: Thank you very much.
GIVE 1, 2020, HD digital video
Video courtesy the artist
