An Interview with Gao Xiang on Art
and women, while the latter has something to do with my internal experience.
Interviewer: Zou Yuejin, Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Interviewee: Gao Xiang Date: 20 June 2007 Venue: College of Humanities, Central Academy of Fine Arts =RX Zou: In studies of pre-historic cave paintings, some scholars have noted that the animals most frequently represented are horses and oxen. They concluded that these two animals were in fact male and female symbols, and may have been related to primitive magic or ritual. It is important in Freud's theory of GUHDPLQWHUSUHWDWLRQWRFRQVLGHUWKHVLJQL¿FDQFHRIDQLPDOVLQD dream from the perspective of gender. I presume, therefore, that it might have something to do with your subconscious when the IHPDOH¿JXUHLVSXVKHGWRWKHEDFNJURXQGDQGWKHKRUVHEHFRPHV the primary image in the paintings. As you have just said, Who is the Doll series expresses your perception of sex and gender in real life, while The Dreams series somehow reveals your subconscious. This shows that there is some continuity on the issue of gender across the two series. Gao: It is not clear in my own mind and it is just a sensory need. What you have just said is most likely true. Zou: The horse occupies most of the painting in much of The Dreamers VHULHVZKLOHWKH¿JXUHVRIPHQDUHPXFKVPDOOHU7KLV size disparity is also seen in you Who is the Doll ? series. I think that the horse, in your mind, has a female, or maternal, quality; it is something you can rely on. She allows you to present your emotional world. I'm just wondering whether the horse has had VRPHRWKHULQÀXHQFHRQ\RXUOLIHIRUH[DPSOHDUHWKHUHZRPHQ in your life born in the year of the horse? Zou: To be exact, the works with horses began in 2003? Gao: Yes, but I did not yet have a clear image in my mind when l was creating these two series. I made them this way because it made me happy. As time passed, ideas and concepts multiplied in my mind, and I shifted from Who is the Doll to The Dreams. The former series expresses my psychological perception of men
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