We enter a misty world where forms appear out of the darkness, and islands appear to float in the sky as if defying gravity. It’s clear we’re not in our world, but we’ve entered the mysterious place that Xiao Ge created. Rope bridges appear to connect these islands, but chunks are breaking them off. There are roaring sounds that could be volcanoes or thunder. Wherever we are, it’s clearly a tempestuous and unstable place.
The film, Echo Bridge, is in the first person, and as we race up one of the bridges towards a lit doorway, we’re almost there. That is, until we stumble, gasp for air and fall into the abyss. What are we going to make of this experience? What does it mean?
While the visuals remind me of the video game Limbo, acclaimed for its artistic black-and-white environments, the work is far more open to interpretation and conceptual. It serves as an allegory for many of our personal struggles, in which we feel so close to achieving our end goal, only to fall at the final hurdle. It also represents the fear of failure that often prevents us from taking the first step towards an ambitious target.
The artist has created the work based on her own life experiences, but it now exists with a life of its own. Some will take religious inferences away, seeing the glowing doorway as a passage to the afterlife; others may see it as a dream or nightmare where falling is common just before we wake up. Its beauty lies in its universality, resonating with any audience while remaining open for each viewer to interpret in a way that aligns with their past, present, or future selves.
The artist’s East Asian heritage naturally draws us into the landscapes and fantastical worlds we often find in ancient Chinese scroll paintings, and it wouldn’t have been surprising if the rumbling sounds in the background turned out to be a dragon. Regarding contemporary Chinese art, it also reminded me of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, who built a ladder into the sky out of gunpowder, which was ignited to create a brief but spectacular artwork.
Her wider work suggests that dream worlds are a common theme in her practice. In Memory and displacement, we roam across a forest floor complete with luminous plants. While in Beneath soft folds, three different vessels mutate before our very eyes – whether that be with crystals erupting or the vessel’s smooth surface is quickly colonised by fungi, plants, and insects, as if it’s now become a forest floor.
Throughout her practice, these surreal worlds often explore our relationship with nature as we navigate worlds that don’t exist in the physical world but feel like magical interpretations of the landscapes we see around us.
Xiao Ge is clearly a talented artist, and when the work is displayed in future galleries, I’d like to see the works become more interactive so we can navigate these worlds ourselves. The works would also benefit from stepping out of the screen, so we can view the films while standing in an installation that resembles the world we’re navigating in these works.
Written by Tabish Khan
