by Cristobal Alday
Jiaming You, Garden Scissors, 2024
Chicago based, interdisciplinary artist Jiaming You, utilizes found imagery to draw from and photos taken by themselves to create spaces occupied by non-gendered bodies as a way to critique and call attention to the ways in which we are socialized to take in information but also superimpose it onto others. Through their personal experience as a non-binary immigrant, they help us question power dynamics at play and how we can be more aware of them on a day to day basis. In their solo exhibition, Remnant of City and Flora, You is expanding on the way we are socialized by dissecting the ways that built environments around us also shape our perspectives. These environments, both superficial and also naturally occurring, are used as a means to further examine the push and pull between nature versus nurture and how they manifest into our perceptions and perspectives.
One of the first works in You’s solo exhibition is Garden Scissors. Through their method of capturing images and referencing them in their paintings, this one details a co-owner of a flower shop holding a bouquet in one hand and a pair of cutting scissors in the other. However, through aesthetic manipulation that You has mastered, we cannot see the face since the bouquet of flowers is covering it. There are few details at our disposal with a reimagined background. You paints subtle but charged notions such as the incision point of the scissors cutting the stems of the bouquet that help us determine the gender of the person who is painted based on our own lived experience. What are your first assumptions when you see this painting? When you are limited to seeing a figure whose face is concealed, what details “give away” someone’s gender? In relation to Garden Scissors, there’s also Three Mirrors, 2024. These two pieces are taking the unidentified figure and layering to create a story. The background in both pieces has a dreamlike quality that enhances the central figures. For Three Mirrors, there were multiple reference images used to create a layering effect. The mirrors in the background create a portal to multiple spaces and times that are all happening simultaneously in this third space. The 90 degree angle perspective we are viewing from coupled with the mirror makes this other world, third space possible. In this dreamlike world, You is creating a safe space where you don’t need to perform. Contrary to lived everyday experience where we are constantly performing and conforming to certain standards, whether that is our role as a mother, student, etc., in this safe space, You allows us to let go of our what were supposed to be and instead lets us just exist.
Both Garden Scissors and Three Mirrors also give us a small presence of flora. You helps us navigate the way these incorporations of nature in our everyday lives, whether through fresh flowers in our homes to hikes in the woods to exploring an artificial greenhouse, produce a relationship. We are after all, a product of our lived experiences and surrounding social environments. You grasps this idea with Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. Winter Solstice layers two reference images creating a juxtaposition of external natural environments (outside social influences) and also architecture (our perspectives). Through this combination, we can see the metaphorical aspect being shaped; they are so intertwined that one cannot exist without the other. It is almost as if the snowy landscape is invading the built marble arch and overall architecture in Winter Solstice. In Spring Equinox, crystal chandeliers are seen in a reflection as well as a forest of flora. You continues to play with our imagination as the chandeliers are seen brightly lit despite having no electricity in sight to power them on. Elaborating on the way natural environments and artificial creations cannot exist without one another, here we see how nature is quite literally powering the chandeliers. The chandeliers (our perspectives and lived experience) are being shaped by the surrounding nature (flora present). The tension between nature and superficial aspects blur making you think what is what. The binaries between both are blurred when finding these human interventions in nature showing that a human has modified the place. So, just like nature shapes our social being, the vice versa is also possible.
Jiaming You,Three Mirrors, 2024
Jiaming You,Winter Solstice, 2024
Jiaming You, Spring Equinox, 2024
Through manipulation of our own, we have the ability to change our social conditioning; just as much as external factors shape us, we can do the same. In You’s Urban Greenhouses, they are pushing us to think about the implications we have on nature and how systems of society have shaped us even before we were even born. From baby showers and gender reveals, these ideas are imposed on us before we even take our first breath. How do we retaliate? In Urban Greenhouses the presence of nature is all consuming. An illusive figure in the middle is outlined by flora throughout. The only human outlier is the painted hand holding a bouquet of flowers. The figure is made up of urban signifiers such as flashing light and glass windows. The cityscape acts as a breathing space through the use of water colors. However, here we can see the ways in which the tables turn where the individual is shaping the city (man-made) just as nature (external influences) are shaping the individual. In this tug of war, a blurring between private and public life is happening. The private bedroom filled with flowers and the public city buildings blur and blend with You’s brushstrokes. Through the use of blurring these public and private aspects, they translate into influences and internal conditioning. Everyone wants to be their true selves and behave in a way that is what they think they are. In order to counter them, we must explore from the beginning up until now outside factors. If you stripped back all the perceived notions imposed on yourself, what would be left? That’s what You is trying to figure out as they paint. This can also be seen in the ways many of the figures rarely face you up front. A reflection of uncertainty of self is occurring since You has felt unseen in many spaces due to their identity. These spaces have tried to condition them into existing based on what people think they should be or behave like.
A Virtual Ghost with Kindness amplifies the idea of feeling unseen but also the imposition of other’s notions on your self image. Here, You overlaps body parts with cityscapes. There is no longer an outline with the city such as with Urban Greenhouses. Instead, there is an incarnation of the city where it becomes a figure versus the other way around where the city got poured into the figure. People try to narrow down what they think is right or wrong based on their own lived experience and impose this on individuals. But, to try to pinpoint and define a person is very complicated and impossible. You questions the impositions placed on them and who they should be. Through manipulation of their own, they become who they want to be in their paintings. They embody both and neither of the nature and cityscapes simultaneously causing an overwhelmingness towards finding an escape from social conditioning.
Jiaming You, Urban Greenhouse, 2024
Jiaming You, A Virtual Ghost with Kindness, 2024
In the final set of images, You continues to investigate and implement only minimal elements of the human body. By ostracizing to only draw attention to certain qualities, You is taking advantage of the way that advertisements call to us. These advertisements focus on the object that is being sold by directing our view toward something we believe we need through various manipulations such as centering, shimmering and so on. In viewing A Little Bit of Body Warmth, note the nod to human presence through a slight exposure of the neck. You wants our attention to be on the magenta flowers, bright in color and focus on what flowers especially of this color mean in society. When advertisers showcase certain elements, they are mainly catering to the binary of men and women in society and how they should act. You flips this narrative and instead makes us question our preconceived notions of who this was made for and why. A truth to what they are painting is being shown. Pale Flame goes further by showcasing a sole hand holding purple flowers with ghostly, flame apparitions. The hand itself becomes a site, a holder of these external environmental influences. You has finally taken control of their own perception of the self. An identity is created to their very hand versus it being given to them on a daily basis from outside influences. One Apology, we only see a part of a hand coming out of a leathery coat. Flowers are being held by the belt and though hands in the pockets can be seen as an insecurity, here they are coupled with the pose seeking security. The minimal use of outside flora, otherwise used as a metaphor for external influences, hints at almost being able to present oneself in a true light.
Through our social roles and preconceived notions of gender, we fixate on aspects that let us know what someone identifies as before asking them. On the individual level and mass level, You wants to direct our attention to these normalized conditioning systems that make us impose our first hand experiences onto others. How can we show up as what we want and not what others perceive us as? Through You’s creation of third spaces and belief that your reality can be manifested in your paintings, we can begin to and take action towards undoing our conditioning and imagining outside of these created binaries.
Jiaming You, A Little Bit of Body Warmth, 2024
Jiaming You, Pale Flame, 2024
Jiaming You, One Apology, 2024
May 16, 2024