As Words Are Lost: Interview with Jia

By moving between the cultural spheres of China and Germany, the value of language and cultural preservation looms large in Berlin-based artist Jia’s practice. Known for her series “The Chinese Version” (2011– ), in which well-known and forgotten Chinese characters form geometric shapes on canvas, the artist’s interest in disappearing cultural phenomena goes well beyond the written language within her multifaceted practice of performance, conceptual art and social engagement that stems from her formative years in film, Chinese opera and architecture. ArtAsiaPacific caught up with Jia in her charming studio between piles of books, a small stage, and a ballet barre to talk about her cultural transit, the loss of languages and her current art projects.

Your works have a special relationship with language. For example, one piece of the series “The Chinese Version” (2011– ) was shown in the exhibition “Luther and the Avantgarde” in Wittenberg’s Old Prison. How did you develop this series, and what place does language hold in your perspective on art?

After I moved to Germany, I took a German language class. While studying this, I realized that I was forgetting all of my Chinese, even though I love writing in Chinese so much! I was asking myself what I could do about this ongoing loss of culture through language, especially now that I had more distance and possibilities, being an artist living outside of China. This was how the idea of “The Chinese Version” was born. Not everyone knows that we only use 10 percent of our traditional language. And doing some research, I realized that even though I understood more the form than the meaning of certain characters, I cared more about the style than about the content. Now it’s the other way around.

However, this research is frustrating sometimes, because even in dictionaries, very ancient words have no proper translation and no one is alive to tell me what these characters originally meant. But a friend of mine encouraged me, since it is important work, even if only few people do it.

Is your practice related to cultural loss inspired by your move to Germany in 2009?

I was an architect when I lived in China, and became an artist once I moved here. Since living in Berlin, I have actually been thinking more about the problem of “Chinese culture” as a whole, which you are less concerned about when living inside China. In contrast to what people might think, for me, it was actually not about accessing critical discourse about China, but more about nostalgia for my culture.

However, this focus on Chinese culture is only the beginning. Every culture has the same problem: We don’t care as much about traditional language and customs anymore. After going to see movies at the Berlinale Film Festival and watching all these small countries’ film productions, I felt very inspired to work more on an international scale. Now, I am actually working on “The Global Version” for next year. This project is about lost languages, from those that disappeared in small European countries to the minority dialects of big countries like China.

Do you perceive yourself as a Chinese artist living abroad?

I never think of myself as a female artist, I am simply an artist. And I don’t think of myself as a Chinese person, but of course everyone knows that I am Chinese. People here remind me sometimes that I am Chinese, which even I forget in Berlin. It doesn’t matter where I come from as long as I can work here. I don’t like to be selected because of my country of origin; it should always be about my work.

How does your background in various practices like film, architecture or Chinese opera appear in your works today?

Since my studies in traditional Chinese opera, I have been fascinated by the stage and performing. For an untitled work from 2014, I collected over 90,000 art exhibition titles over the course of ten years. I then wrote a poem—each sentence is a combination of these titles, and then performed it on stage in 2014. I started this project after visiting Venice, where everyone gives you flyers or pamphlets to lure you into their exhibitions. The titles for these shows are naturally very important if the visitors don’t know the names of the artists or institutions, but there are also lots of exhibitions where the titles have nothing to do with the content of the exhibitions anymore—the name only catches people’s attention. This is how I started thinking about this performance.

Architecture is always on my mind when I create a work. It breaks the limitation of artworks and therefore extends my creative process. I don’t just think about the artwork itself, but also about its function in the space. This is important to create interactions with the viewers.

Generally, because of my broad background, I don’t want to limit myself to just one medium. Art is not only about the work, but also about the effort and idea behind it. This is why I am always choosing between performance, conceptual practice or installation works, for example. When collectors ask me about my works, I always ask them instead to find out in what space they would like to exhibit them.

Mini-Shop seems to be very different from your other works . . .

Yes, it is very different from my conceptual practice, but I am very interested in these children, also because of a disappearing culture that they are part of. As a socially engaged artist, I actually find that art should always be about a meaningful impact on society.

These orphans are from the Yi ethnic minority and have their own ancient language. Since the writing reforms [in the 1950s], there have been problems with learning their new written language—it is completely different from their spoken language—which incites alienation from their own language. Publications in this dialect are very rare, and all the wonderful folk stories told by their grandparents were never written down. I am thinking about going back and collecting these stories, asking the children to paint them and publishing a book to preserve all of this. These are very different stories from other Chinese cultures, so not many people know about this piece of ethnic history.

Are there any new interdisciplinary projects coming up that you can tell us about?

I am also planning a performance about immobile objects, criticizing our daily use of technology, mainly our phones. I feel like we only touch one thing now, not so much materials like wood or metal. I want to make people more aware of the materiality of things. The loss has been replaced by technology.

Also, I used to be part of The Practice Society, an independent film society in the early 2000s. This was the first time that Chinese filmmakers had opportunities to watch real movies, because before then, we were limited to Russian or Soviet movies. People were eager to learn, to exchange ideas, and that’s why we had events that were popular. However, we were shut down in the second year by state authorities. Now, I am actually planning to make a movie in China.

Jia’s work can be viewed on her personal website.

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