The art of living
Torsten Jurell
How unaffected by the market see-saw, Jingdezhen, the capital of porcelain, lets Xiao Xue reveal her creative self and makes her work unique, not in terms of the technique, but in terms of her
sensitivity towards her passion, her art, shares Torsten Jurell.
It was early evening in Jingdezhen when I first met Xiao Xue. She was clutching a copy of my yellow book in her hand. I was on my way to my room in the unassuming hotel when, cheerfully yet somewhat bashful, she stepped forward to tell me how much she liked the pictures she had seen while leafing through the book. It was an unexpected encounter. Spontaneous. But, naturally, I was flattered by the interest she showed. Two years have passed since then, since the day she dug deep into her shoulder bag to retrieve her digital camera and show me a few samples of her own work. Strange pictures, unusual sculptures, brim full of expressivity. A few days later, she guided me through the bewildering maze of alleys around Lao Chang, the old ceramics factory complex, where she had her studio at that time. We took fright at a gaggle of angry geese that nipped at our legs. We jumped from stone to stone to avoid the puddles of rainwater that had transformed the narrow alleyway into a muddy track. On the way, I bumped into a woman that Xiao Xue matter-of-factly told me was the local prostitute.
People stopped to look at us, curious about who it was that Xiao Xue was shepherding through the backstreets, before we finally disappeared into the studio that she shared with a friend. There, Xiao Xue showed me her weirdly wonderful sculptures. The application of glaze – full of expression, so natural, so obvious – and the way the clay was worked and formed seemed so different from what I had seen in the Saturday markets’ lavish display of art and crafts, where students from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute sell their work alongside that of other ceramicists. I remember when I first confronted Xiao Xue’s work in the studio, I struggled a little with the burlesque expression of some of the pieces – those that somehow combined a hint of eroticism, high spirits and a dash of humour with a solemnity that was almost religious in tone. There was something in the immediacy of her expression that, at first sight, I felt compelled to resist. Even now, as I am writing about the mixed feelings that these works engendered within me, I find myself reliving the exact
moment when Xiao Xue switched on the fan and began to rummage through the mess. I can recall with precision how I was in two minds about what I was seeing, despite being enchanted by most of her works.
