zhixin sheng

home 


→  installation
invisible cities 
utopian being I
utopian being II

→  text and image 
the sensualists: a book of prayer
the firework city

→  photography
luminous










 

Utopian being II




Utopian Being II
2023
cyanotype scans, projectors, interlacing fabrics and other installation materials 
38cm x 72cm



In the second iteration of Utopian Being, I implicate myself directly in the work, constructing a dialogue across time between an archival image of my mother and a self-portrait. By bringing the gaze, and the ambiguity of subject and object into focus, this work emphasizes the distance and tension between imagination and representation. It gives form to the sometimes strenuous emotional space within familial relationships while fabricating an impossible moment of mutual, unmoving gaze.

The inclusion of my own image, mirroring my mother’s gesture but turned away, interacts with the directionality of the fabric, offering multiple ways to relate to her image. Depending on the viewer’s position, the two figures appear either face-to-face or turned away from each other. My presence in the image also introduces a degree of depersonalization; the gaze is not entirely my own, but shaped by the archival image’s influence—less an autonomous subject, more a response.

This time, the fragility of the encounter is expressed through the ephemeral nature of light. When the viewer stands directly in front of the image, the moment shifts from a personal encounter to a social interaction with a stranger’s image, raising questions about the boundary between public and private. Using two fabrics as semi-translucent screens, with variations in texture and opacity, my mother’s image bleeds beyond the frame, visually articulating an influence that transcends time: a spectral imprint on my own form.