Louise Bourgeois once stated that art serves as a means of self-recognition, a mechanism to translate physiological pain from an abstract plane into something visible and tangible. A heavy goal, no doubt, and one that has permeated much traditional and contemporary art. Alongside Bourgeois’s feminist art, Eva Hess’s soft, ephemeral sculptures introduced vulnerability through materiality; similarly, Kiki Smith’s depictions of bodies in abject states invoked feminist concerns about embodiment, subjectivity, and knowledge. All these artists contribute to a movement toward showcasing and understanding physical and emotional pain through art.

This philosophy permeates the practice of the London-based Chinese artist Jingyun Guan, whose performances, installations, and paintings navigate this ambiguous plane of emotions, where personal wounds become tactile meditations on belonging and resilience. In our recent conversation, Guan reflects on this emotional excavation and its interconnection with material experimentation, employing materials choices similar to those of their contemporaries (e.g., Bourgeois’s latex sculptures, or Eva Hesse’s exploration of fragility through industrial materials). Guan draws a visual line through wax, silicone, and stockings, reclaiming the abject body as a site for queer power. With a lineage into feminist materiality, Guan speaks with a very resonant contemporary tone, one shaped by diasporic displacement and the ambiguity of home.

On the work, On my way home, the artist sets a visual and conceptual voice that later follows all their artistic inquiry. The artwork, a sausage-like soft sculpture made out of stockings, cotton, and silicone, embodies the journey of a decaying sausage. Firmly inspired by a personal anecdote, the artwork originated from the artist’s persistent encounter with a rotting sausage on her way home from high school. Through this continuous observation, the artist began to identify with its decay and abandonment, contemplating the quiet violence of a journey into the unknown and unlonged-for—a perpetual ‘on the way home’ to a place that may not exist. 

Furthermore, this inquiry appears in other works as well, where the material becomes the protagonist of the story. Where the uterine-like form in these pieces questions the concept of home and belonging. This connects directly to the artist’s experiences as a Chinese artist living in London, far from family, and how this experience shapes their sense of self. Across much of Guan’s practice, there is a constant struggle to identify, or rather, pinpoint the exact emotion tied to this diasporic experience of perpetual displacement.

Drawing influence from Yukio Mishima’s provocations about desiring pain and employing a deliberately childlike visual language, Guan draws the audience before confronting them with an unfiltered dialogue on belonging, memory, and intimacy. Another work that embodies these frameworks is Come Into My Water, an acrylic painting depicting a body in a bathtub, but a rather intimate scene transforms into a meditation on how relationships inscribe themselves onto the flesh. This recent work carries a narrative of softness in contrast with acute violence, creating a visual narrative that brings visceral sensation that precedes intellectual understanding. Connecting with theories of abject art, this artwork, and most of Guan’s practice, depict all the aspects of the body, physical or emotional, that are deemed impure or inappropriate for public display or discussion. Yet, as personal as this dialogue is, it is a necessary one within the current social systems, hinting at how intimate relationships can be shaped by patriarchy and heteronormativity.

As London’s contemporary art scene risks identity politics becoming didactic, particularly under the influence of curatorial narratives and market demands for easily digestible content, Guan’s queer Chinese perspective emerges at a pivotal moment. In a cultural landscape hungry for unguarded and honest expression, their practice fills a crucial gap, offering something rare: vulnerability without categorization, trauma without spectacle, and a strong refusal of cultural tokenism. With upcoming exhibitions in London and Brazil, Guan positions herself within a growing dialogue between diasporic artists and transnational audiences.

Guan’s childlike visual language operates on a dual capacity. Similar to Bourgeois’s statement, the artist’s works are a personal reckoning with desire and displacement, a stage for emotion to become tangible, yet they also have a collective undertone, a whispering voice within the noise, an alarming intimacy through materials that creates space for a collective reflection of trauma’s lingering presence in the body. Demonstrating that sometimes the most intimate gestures can carry profound cultural inquiries, where home is not seen as a destination but rather a constant adjustment. 

Learn more about the artist here.

Cover image:

On My Way Home. Stockings, cotton, meat hooks, silicone, 100x160 cm, 2024. By Jingyun Guan.

All images courtesy of Jingyun Guan.