我是2008年在应歆珣工作室第一次看到《都市碎片》系列作品的，那时，她刚刚完成其中的“梳妆台”。至今，我仍然记得她的研究生导师施慧和梁绍基向我推荐、介绍应歆珣作品时的场景，尽管当时应歆珣一副不善言语的害羞状，对自己的作品没有做过多的解释。但我能够感受到她作品的内在力量，以及残缺的结构所显示出的视觉张力和诗意的、凄美的格调。
在应歆珣于2009年完成的《都市碎片》系列作品中，她将经过处理的牛皮包裹缝合在旧的家具上，这些家具与她个人成长经验息息相关，比如梳妆台、衣柜、抽屉、鞋盒，而在其中又内置了跟她日常生活关联更为直接的服饰、化妆品、高跟鞋、拉链等等物品。在内外灯光的映射下，这些物品通过牛皮半透明的影子，构成了一种虚幻、诡异，而且怪诞的聚合关系。包括后来的2011年，由这一系列作品延伸创作的另一系列《进化》等作品，尽管略有不同，但创作的脉络是一致的。旧家具的现成品或用牛皮等制作的家具是日常生活必备的物品，服饰是人身体的第二皮肤，都是私人空间与公共空间在生活、身体上的隔阂，承载着时代变迁后影响我们生活方式的种种标识。我比较诧异于她所使用的中间层的牛皮材料，因为一般女性艺术家容易或惯常于利用纤维、织物等软性材料，而牛皮具有密实的、较劲儿的材料属性，也许她在寻求服饰的纤弱与牛皮的坚韧之间的对比关系，强化装置艺术的实在体量。而她所钟情于牛皮半透明的视觉效果，以及光的反射，既化解了由神秘造成的太多尴尬，又呈现了她以往的封闭、伤感的现实处境。我揣测这是应歆珣该系列作品在隐喻、象征地显示着她本身的经历、记忆和梦想，甚至是成长的伤痛，凸显了“她”孤寂与落寞的状态，也透视出“她”梦的想象，抑或对未来的美好憧憬。我们尽可以在她2015年创作的《拥抱场》中获得对人与人之间“爱”的眷恋与体验。
其中，我以为“缝合”是她作品的关键词之一，“伤害”是她比较明确的针对性。如果说， 她将这些与她生存相关的物品集合、装置为一体，那只是达到艺术创作的基本层次，而“缝合”就是一种比较主观的行为方式了。“缝合”意味着曾经的撕裂，也是痛楚的弥合，还是自我救赎的仪式。恰如她2015年创作的《别怕，我会给你缝道美丽的疤》系列作品的题目一般；亦如她的《朿朿》系列，利用钢筋、布、弹力棉等材料，所构成的锐利、伤害、脆弱、防卫的对比与冲突的容量。显然，应歆珣是从现实的个人经历中剪裁物品的碎片、服饰的片断去缝合、排遣、释怀她的青春残酷与浪漫情怀。青春和伤害的存在仿佛是矛盾对立的两极，然而，在应歆珣的装置作品里，她给予它们的相互转化，包含了特定时期生命本身的微妙关系。尽管在这些作品中，没有她的自我形象或更多的人物造型，却如在牛皮上勾勒出的如影随形，在布面织物中的拼合、叠加与重置，呼应和营造了这种间离的效果。因此，应歆珣又是非常真实地表现出记忆状态下的内心世界，可谓是一种在内心折射的抽象现实。甚至对牛皮、纤维等媒介材料的使用与迷恋，构成了一件件双重皮肤的身体标识，还有作为一种心绪、情感的附加值，以及在喧嚣的混世里浓缩了她无所谓的自我表现。
应歆珣的艺术创作个案，使我想到，如果从中国艺术家代际的差异性考察，出生于50、60年代的艺术家，其个体命运与民族、社会政治命运的走向紧密纠结在一起，仿佛是波澜壮阔的历史洪流中的浮萍。他们的艺术创作主要还是围绕20世纪以来中国的命运展开，更多的是表现为一种历史性的宏大叙事，许多作品都试图在一种人生境遇的大起大落中透射出个体的脆弱与抗争。而80后艺术家群体的成长经历则完全不同。不同的人生体验，势必会造就截然不同的艺术表达。从不少80后艺术家的作品中可以看到，他们的创作正逐步融入全球化的发展潮流，超越了前辈以“大我”为中心的宏观叙事框架，使艺术回归对人类普世价值的关怀，回归对个体命运的关切，回归日常生活的情景之中。长久以来，不仅日常生活经验一直被那些追求宏大命题的艺术家所轻视，而且，它所表达的价值和渴求，以及它营造意义的可能性，也不断地受到质询和怀疑。但这恰恰从另一方面给予了日常生活经验艺术的一种存在理由，说明它应该在艺术创作或艺术想象中占有一席之地。事实上，正是由于宏大的历史叙事常常陷入一种空洞的尴尬，才赋予艺术对日常生活经验的表达以必要性和价值。所以，应歆珣对日常生活中残缺和伤痛的检视及体察，使得现代城市生活所带给我们的焦虑，以及由此产生的苦闷和枯寂的心境，通过她这些年的作品被提示和提升地呈现出来，使之成为一个值得思考的意义范畴和思辨对象。
80后年轻人的命运都是在个人的选择基础上进行的，自己支配自己的生活，个人通过自己的成长中的选择来决定自己生活的状态。这样的变化其实就是一个在全球化和市场化的新的环境中出现的新的个人特点。他们的生活已经和计划经济下的人生有了根本的不同，他们面临的已经是在市场经济为前提、市场经济已经变成生活的基本条件的环境之下的命运，个人不得不在这样的生活中寻找感情或者事业的归宿。他们已经有机会在一种普遍的个体的问题中展开自身的选择，悲欢离合的命运，感情的波澜，事业的成败得失，一切年轻人面对的考验不得不用自己的选择加以面对，而不是将问题表述为被“环境”支配的无能为力的痛苦。因此，对80后一代来说生存不是一个问题，他们的问题是选择的方向和方式，或者说，他或者说，他们已经摆脱了艺术干预现实的一厢情愿的理想，而倾向于营造自己的话语空间，搭建独属于“我”一个人的剧场。所以，在他们作品中呈现出的自我认同、自我焦虑与自我表达的内容，也就不难于理解了。而应歆珣的艺术创作应该可以为我们提供这一现象的个案例证。
冯博一
2017年

I had the chance to see Ying Xinxun’s Urban Debris series for the first time at her studio back in 2008. She just finished the Dressing Table. She was highly recommended by her research supervisors, Shi Hui and Liang Shaoji, and I can still recall the moments when we met. Ying Xinxun was shy and didn’t talk much about her works. However, I could still feel clearly the inner strength of her works, as well as the visual tension and poetic feature created by her preference in using broken structures.
Ying Xinxun’s Urban Debris series were completed in 2009. In her works, she sewed cow leather into old furniture pieces. The furniture include dressing table, wardrobe,drawer, shoe box and other pieces that were intimately linked to her upbringing. She even placed daily accessories, cosmetic product, high-heel shoe and zipper within the furniture. When the combinations were illuminated by lights from inside and outside, the translucent cow leather helped create a strange shadow, symbolizing an unreal, bizarre and fragile relationship. Ying’s later artistic works were formed into another series titled Evolution in 2011. These were different art forms, but the essence behind the artistic creation remained the same. Old furniture and furniture made by cow leather are our daily necessaries, while cloths are the secondary skin of human being. They can all be interpreted as the partitions between private space and public space in our life and physical body. They have witnessed the ups and downs of time and are identifying marks of our lifestyle. To be honest I was amazed by her skilled use of cow leather. Many other female artists prefer or are more inclined to use fabrics, textile fabric and other soft materials to reflect their thoughts. However, the texture of cow leather was firm and dense. To me, maybe she was fascinated by the sharp contrast between the fragile cloth and the dense cow leather, and her preference in using the translucent cow leather and the reflection of lights helped ease the awkwardness caused by the mysterious nature of her works. In addition,her works also reflected her past psychological isolation and the saddening realistic situation. I therefore assume that Ying Xinxun intends to portray her past experience, memories, dreams or the growing pain by applying metaphor and symbolism in her art work series. These art works have fully demonstrated her loneliness, those imageries in her dream as well as her aspiration for a bright future. We can have a much stronger impression when we examine her Embracing Field in 2015, where we can feel the strong sentiment among people and their longing for love.
I think sewing is an essential tool for Ying to portray trauma in her art works. It is a basic requirement for her to place furniture, equipment and other devices that are closely linked to her life together to carry out artistic creation; but sewing itself is a subjective behavior. Sewing is meant to cure the past wound, and can be interpreted as a ritual for self-salvation. We can see the message of self-salvation clearly in her works "Don’t worry", I’ll mend you a beautiful scar with my needlework in 2015, as well as her Beam series, where she used steel bar, cloth and cotton stretch to reflect the contrast among sharpness, trauma, fragility, defense and conflict. Obviously by using fragments from cloths and other objects collected in her daily life and by piecing these fragments together with her needlework, Ying intends to portray youth cruelty and romantic sentiment. Youth and trauma are meant to be the two poles of a direct contradiction. However, in Ying’s art works, they become convertible, indicating the existence of a subtle relationship at the given periods of time. Despite that the self image or other character modeling are missing in Ying’s art works, but you can still see their existence through the shadows going through the cow leather, or by the integration, overlying and replacement of cloth fabrics. In a sense, Ying is able to reflect her inner world vividly, a world in the form of memory, in other words, the abstract reality reflected by Ying’s mind. Ying’s heavy use and fascination by cow leather, fabric and other intermediary materials help form one after another bodily identifications, as if they are the added value of a particular mind or sentiment, or her carefree living philosophy to live in this chaotic world.
After looking at Ying Xinxun’s art creation, I have a new observation on the artistic style difference among Chinese artists who were born in different generations. For those artists born in the 1950s or 1960s, their personal fates were severely impacted by the continuous political movements and the national destiny of China, as if they were tiny and insignificant duckweeds drifting in the mighty torrent of history. They, therefore, tend to link their art creations to the China’s national fate in the 20th century. They prefer to use historic narration to portray the ups and downs of individuals, as well as their fragility and resistance. However, for artists who were born in the 1980s, their upbringing are much different, and because of their different life experience, their artistic expressions become totally different. After watching a great many art creations by artists born in the 1980s, I can clearly tell that they are already part of the global development trend. They have transcended their predecessors and their greatself-oriented narrative frameworks, and start focusing their arts on universal value of love, the concern on individual fate and sceneries that are common in our daily lives. Daily life experience have been long ignored by artists who are only keen in pursue for macro-themed art creation; in addition, these daily experience themed art works, as well as their value, aspiration and their hinted possibility are constantly questioned by critics. To me, it is a good reason enough to prove the legitimacy of their existence in our art creation or artistic imagination. The macro narrative art creations tend to fall into the empty awkwardness, and that is exactly why it is necessary and valuable to have an alternative art form that focuses more on the portraying of daily life experience. Ying Xinxun observes closely the deformity and pain in our daily life, as well as the anxiety, loneliness and frustration that we are exposed in living in cities. These elements are vividly demonstrated in Ying’s art works, calling for more people to think deep on these social issues.
For young people who are born in the 1980s, they live their own life and make decisions based on their actual condition. Such a change echoes with the market-oriented global trend. Unlike the previous generations whose lifestyles have been severely affected by the planned economy, these youngsters encounter new problems under the market economy, in terms of seeking for the destinies for their career and personal life. They have already had the freedom to make personal choice. It all depends on themselves to make decisions that may affect the ups and downs of their lives, humanly affection, career development; while in the past people were useless and frustrated to make decisions on their own because of the outside environment. That is to say, it is not an issue for post-1980 artists to make a living by themselves, their problem is how to make sound decision and live a meaningful life; or they have already parted company with the seemingly noble ideal that allows the art to intervene reality. These young artists love to create their own discourse spaces, or arena that only belongs to themselves. Therefore it is not hard to understand the self-recognition, self-anxiety and self-expression in their art works. We can see so these characteristics clearly in Ying Xinxun’s art creation, and she is a fine example of such a new trend.
Feng Boyi
2017