Photography (MA)

Qian Jiang

Qian Jiang (b.1995) is a visual artist and researcher based in London, working at the intersection of photography, text, sculpture and installation. Qian will continue her studies at the RCA in 2020/21, when she undertakes an MRes to further her research practice. Her artworks have been exhibited internationally, including in group shows at Tate Modern (London), MO XIANG Art (Beijing), and V-Space (Shanghai).

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Contact

ku.ca.acr.krowten@gnaij.naiq

www.qianjiang.co.uk

@qianjiang_

fall into place

Degree Details

School of Arts & Humanities

Photography (MA)

My research and visual inquiry focus on the integration between photography and philosophy. In my ongoing research project Photography as the Visual Embodiment of Nothingness, I explore the relationship between the philosophical concept of Nothingness and the visual and material medium of photography.

Having grown up in a Buddhist family, by way of my father and grandmother, I encountered the concept of Nothingness through Buddhism. Encountering this concept again during my MA studies led me to understand it as a fundamental aspect of life and art, yet one that is most often overlooked, despite being fundamental for the artistic experience in the 21st century.

What fascinates me is that Nothingness cannot be understood analytically, but has to be experienced. It is an exemplary subject for showing what art can do, because art usually does not tell us what something is, but how it feels. From my perspective, photography has a privileged relationship with Nothingness due to its mode of production and paradoxical nature. It is an ideal medium for making nothingness visualised and experienced. As Martin Heidegger stated “nothing nothings”, which suggests that Nothingness is simultaneously existent and non-existent. In photography, existence and non-existence play out in the visual field as the mechanically produced image puts forward a vision of materiality that is both present and absent.

The practical dimension of my research consists of visual experiments that explore the relationship between photography and Nothingness and I have experimented with other media, such as text, installation, sculpture and found objects in an attempt to understand Nothingness in different ways. The work intends to create an experience of Nothingness by exploring the non-visible and non-representational dimensions of photography.

One Minute of Photographic Time — 300cmx150cm, C-type print, Edition of 3 + 2AP, 2019

One Minute of Photographic Time — Exhibition View

One Minute of Photographic Time — Detail

In One Minute of Photographic Time, I presented 60 1-second exposures to explore an experience of photographic time as different from the chronological time of the clock. This work shows that Nothingness cannot be represented, but it can be experienced through photographic repetition. When I was taking these pictures, I understood the gap between every shot as Nothing. Therefore, I used the gaps created by the images to inhabit nothingness. These gaps, while present to the eye, are at the same time “nothing” as they are not present in any of the images.

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Medium:

c-type print

Size:

300cmx150cm

Duration and simultaneity meditation nothingness Philosophy Photography time Water

Water On Water, Edition of 5 + 2AP, 2020

In Water on Water, I shot one picture of a river and printed it. Then I put the print on the river and shot it again. I wished the audience to experience the whole life of an image, not just what it showed to us visually. This image on the water would melt, disappear and eventually become nothing, as if it had never been there.

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Medium:

inkjet print

Size:

200cmx133cm

Experience nothingness photography representation water

Image and Space — 42cmx29.9cm, 59.4x84.1cm, Inkjet print, 2020

Image and Space — Detail

In this work, Image and Space, I would like to approach notions of space and Nothingness. This work consists of close-up photographs of areas in my living room, folded and warped and oddly placed to accentuate an uncanny quality. Through this presentation I wanted to invoke a sense of multiple spaces. These spaces, unable to be captured and represented by images, are infinitely closed to Nothingness—Losing the ability to be viewed visually and studied scientifically, they could be experienced within our everyday life.

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Medium:

inkjet print

Size:

42cmx29.9cm, 59.4x84.1cm

everyday life Folding Image nothingness Philosophy Photography Space

Where Is Blank, Edition of 5 + 2AP, 2020

In Where Is Blank, I presented a photograph from my daily life from which I erased the central objects and turned them into a white circle. This creates an omission in the image that leaves it up to the viewer to negotiate or ‘fill in’. By doing this, I want to guide the viewer to think about what Nothingness is. People always think that the white circle is blank and contains nothing—I want to challenge this perception. I believe that the circle is not nothing, because it at least contains the viewer’s imagination and expectation about what has been omitted. It is to assert that daily life is not blank and ‘nothing’; I think nothingness can lurk in our daily life and this is my attempt to ‘pull it out’

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Medium:

c-type print

Size:

194cmx130cm

blank Conceptual daily life nothingness Philosophy photography White

In Eastern philosophy, especially Zen Buddhism, Nothingness is a kind of perfection in which everything is one. A saying in Buddhist classic Heart Sutra, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form”, shows that in nothingness (emptiness), the duality of subjectivity and objectivity, time and space, being and not being is eliminated. In the series of works about imagination, I aspire to create a moment for the audience to meditate Nothingness. I try to guide the audience to play with objects through imagination. In this imagination, the subject and object, might compromise their conflict and start merging with each other. Therefore, nothingness is born.

In my work Imagine You Are, I encourage the audience to play with a bench in the garden through text. In Imagine You Are Air, I suggest the audience to perceive the air which is easy to be overlooked in our daily life. In Imagine You Are This Marble, I ask the audience to observe and feel a piece of marble. In Imagine You Are You, I inspire the audience to question the absoluteness of their own existence and enter an egoless state of being. This state offers an opportunity to integrate with everything.

imagination Installation meditation nothingness Philosophy Photography Public Space spiritual perfection text art Zen Buddhism