Wang Jin
Wang Jin | China b.1962 | Robe 1999 | Polyvinyl chloride and fishing line | Gift of an anonymous donor through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2011. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Robe is an early example of a major body of work that occupied Wang Jin for the most part of a decade. In these works, the iconic form of the Beijing opera robe is rendered in transparent plastic embroidered with fishing line. For Wang, plastic is the material that most succinctly represents the contradictions of contemporary society – cheap and versatile, omnipresent and environmentally unfriendly, and, as the artist has put it, ‘high tech junk’. In creating a revered article of traditional costume from an arguably vulgar fabric, it may be said the artist is engaged in an act of profanation. However, the object itself retains a haunting beauty, one that could only be produced by the use of such a material and, metaphorically, it suggests that the relationship between tradition and modernity is a complex rather than linear process. In this sense, the forces at work in a rapidly changing Chinese society – including competing desires for material wealth, the security of tradition and the sanctity of interpersonal relationships – deserve careful and ongoing attention.
