A diaphanous face overlapped by the whisper of cascading water leads the way to a landscape of cocoon-like trees, their branches of a rich copper brown shaped at the extremities like fertile eggs. Tender, almond-shaped, jade-coloured eyes let the long lashes flap away as the scene moves into a pond cradling a nymph-like body. Xilichen Hua’s Self-Gaze (2025), a single-channel video, draws us into its allegorical realm by taking us back historically and enveloping the beholder in a Pre-Raphaelite atmosphere; yet we are presented with a hybrid Ophelia, as the central character of this work is reminiscent not only of Millais’s iconic subject but also of a ‘hyperreal’ mermaid.
The theatrical element is not only present in the reference to the female archetype floating in the river in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but also serves as a critique of the ‘synthetic femininity’ that proliferates in our current digitalised world. Mesmerised viewers are left to guess whether they are gazing at a ‘shadow figure’ or an avatar.
The ethereal muse here conjures a series of metaphors as she wanders around a landscape built at the cusp between the magical and the oneiric. In a way, she is Hua’s alter ego, as she merges ancient wisdom with philosophical thought; weaves a mythic persona with the body as a digital construct; blends biomimetic materials with streams of moving images; and turns luscious gardens into sculptural ‘simulacra’ through the construction of light-sensitive visual spaces. She is the incarnation, in Jungian terms, of the ‘phenomenology of spirit in fairytales’, gifting the spectator with that immaterial substance which allows for a renewed awareness of self-boundaries, alternative modes of perception, and heightened subjectivity.
The work gravitates, symbolically, around the suspended moment between life and death, pointing to the differing ways in which women have, from past to present, had their bodily autonomy and self-awareness encroached upon or disturbed by societal expectations and norms. This theme is juxtaposed with an exquisitely detailed nature: symbolic flowers, mushrooming fields, elemental and animistic presences — at times uncanny, at others ephemeral. From an ecofeminist perspective, the eternal and spiritual link between women’s nature and the ‘Primal Mother’; the transient moment of a full moon, with its springing-forth amplification, and its connection to animal behaviour, tidal activity, and, ultimately, female physical and psychological cycles and fertility, are emphasised. The underlying interconnectedness between the female body and nature reminds us that we live in a society where both are exploited in parallel ways, privileging, from a male perspective, control, domination, and extraction.
The notion of rhythm traverses the entire work and enriches Hua’s diverse and vibrant colour palette, as well as the panoply of translucent textures with which Self-Gaze nourishes the viewer’s eye. Poetically, in Self-Gaze, Hua’s rhythm turns into flow, pulse, vitality, and harmony. As this happens, the values of interconnectedness, relational ethics, and sustainability — as alternatives to hierarchical and exploitative structures — fall into our hearts like fresh seeds in fertile soil.
Written by Kalinca Costa Söderlund
