Luo Ping: As the artist, could you introduce this work?
Jin Ruoxi: The title of this work is Mère de grand-père, The Mother of My Grandfather. I've noticed that there always seems to be a family member in my exhibitions; it can be fictional or semi-fictional. These are two old pacifiers; the red thing stuffed inside is a bell, and the two on the outside are fishing lures — fly-fishing lures, whose hooks have barbs, and the design is particularly violent; once something is hooked, it is very difficult to pull it out.
I previously saw a report saying that someone ate fish while the hook was still inside, and he ended up swallowing the hook, it's like a cycle: when fishing, the bait catches the fish, and when the fish is eaten, the bait hooks the person. Coming back to The Mother of My Grandfather, the story behind this work is that when my great-grandmother weaned my grandfather, she chose a desperate measure — putting chili on her nipple. As a result, my grandfather never drank milk for the rest of his life.
Luo: My understanding when I saw it is different from yours. The distance between these two pacifiers corresponds to the distance between nipples in reality, but you placed them at a relatively high eye level or mouth level, which is different from placing them horizontally on a table. It reminded me of a story I once heard, of a mother breastfeeding a child, and the child is already quite big but still wants to breastfeed, and when sucking strongly, it brings piercing pain to the mother. This fishhook is like that kind of pain, that kind of harm to the mother.
Jin: I think both sides feel pain — the child feels pain, and the mother feels pain. These pacifiers are French; the things I find are relatively "local".
Luo: I notice that your works seem to all contain an intention of storytelling — you want to convey a narrative. What themes are involved in your storytelling? Do you think there is some kind of commonality?
Jin: These stories are part of my life. Every time I make an exhibition or a project, it is related to my current existence and experience, and I will also work according to the context of the exhibition. For example, the opening of this exhibition was on February 14, Valentine's Day, and I find that quite interesting, so the whole exhibition is a bit like interpersonal relationships. It does not necessarily have to be between couples or lovers; it can also be friendship, various emotions, relationships between people.
It seems that I knew the opening time of this exhibition before last summer, but the actual production of the exhibition only really began one month in advance, and all the works were made on site. None of those works existed before then. Except for The Mother of My Grandfather, for which I had a little bit of an idea, everything else was made on site. Ideas and thoughts emerged while making. Last summer, I was focusing on the exhibition at Galerie Mennour and did not work on this exhibition. Everything was trialed step-by-step within that one month. Many ideas only came into being on site.
And I have a kind of pattern, for example, if at the beginning — say three months ago — I wanted to do something like this, I would definitely break it apart, it would definitely change, because life is constantly changing. I cannot say that three months ago I decided I must do this, and then three months later I would reproduce it step-by-step, because life is always flowing.
