Metamorphosis 16
Huang Ying
黄莺
Production date
2010
Object Detail
Media
digital print
Measurements
200 x 150 cm
Notes
John Berger once said, in ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972): ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.’ In this early precursor text to later theorisations of the ‘male gaze’, the complicating factor is the representation of female bodies by female artists – whether their own or the bodies of others. Huang Ying applies her female subjectivity to an examination of this ambiguous and complicated relationship with the body. She ‘constantly explores the ambivalent relationship between looking and being looked at’ (Gary Xu). In ‘Metamorphosis 15’ and ‘Metamorphosis 16’ the naked body of a woman with Guanyin-like multiple arms is merged with a dragonfly and represented in two inverted halves, like a playing card. Curator Huang Du says that Huang Ying’s work ‘re-defined the boundary between the real and the simulated, the natural and the artificial.’ Her hybridised human/insect beings suggest a post-human future which bestows upon the earthbound body the ability to transcend its physical limitations and take flight.
Accession number
2012.040