2020 MFA Thesis Work
Logics of Non-Exchange

Luna Jiang (b. 1994, Zhejiang, China) is an artist and designer based in New York City. She holds a BFA degree from University of Miami in Graphic Design, and now an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons. Luna works with painting, installation, ceramics, sculpture, experimental video and photography. In 2019 she was in a group show exhibition for Emerging Artists in the Greenpoint Gallery, New York and was both the curator and artist of the exhibition Alice, Wake Up! in the 25 East Gallery at Parsons. This exhibition tried to reveal the close relationship between the public, spiritual and environmental and the perspective of self-analysis in the world of fairy tales.

My artwork concerns the contrast between violence and vulnerability; cuteness and abjection; loneliness and strangeness. I make small-scale ceramic sculptures that resemble new living-creatures related to fungus-like organisms as well as a large-scale diorama sculpture as their shelter, or home. Some surfaces of the sculptures are carved to represent an uneven skin texture, or a scar that signifies violence or emotional struggle and vulnerability, while the others have a smooth texture with a warm glaze.

Tu Zi is a series of bio-morphic ceramic sculptures with different shapes based on fungal organisms. Each one contains holes that look like a volcano, or mouth. I created tiny bacteria-like creatures inserted into a large-scale sculpture, as a harmless way for the viewers to experience the intimacy of cuteness, and the ambiguity between innocence and complication within an unfamiliar, fantasy-like, world. 

Playing with scales and multiplicity, my photography and video activates the audiences’ imagination and shows the intensity of cuteness and disconnection. My work is an expression of my imagination and the dim lighting tries to create a sense of vulnerability and the uncanny. The dream-like setting, the familiar bedroom setting, and the abstracted depiction of space represent traces of my memory, while also being a vehicle for self-healing. 

The doll-house, as the context for the sculptures, is an immersive sheltering environment. It could be a bedroom, but it is not meant to be seen so literally. The viewers might see themselves in the photographs and identify with feelings of anxiety, emptiness and smallness. Loneliness, fear, and serenity can resonate, I hope, altogether.