Xie Rong

The role of translation, the passage between gesture, body and voice, the shift from Chinese into English and back again, the relationship between live performance and the result from the action. Always movement across surfaces, entering and exiting backwards and forwards. I can not settle on one point, I am in flux, restless.

I grew up in ChengDu. I moved to UK when I was 19. In my work I take on the role of director, performer, narrator and filmmaker. I collecting and collaging encounters, voices, texts, images and objects from my culture roots in China and my daily life in UK. Through the mediums of performance and painting. I explore the intrinsic and complex relationship between violence, beauty, and vulnerability, re-examining how these antipodal constructs impact ideas of the ‘self’ and the body. Juxtaposing English narration with Chinese traditional songs, I explore the territory between gesture and stillness, between my past and present, between abstract mark making and personal story telling. Between public space and intimate privacy.
The role of translation, the passage between gesture, body and voice, the shift from Chinese into English and back again, the relationship between live performance and the result from the action. Always movement across surfaces, entering and exiting backwards and forwards. I can not settle on one point, I am in flux, restless.

Light, Xie Rong, 2019, Leipzig Germany, 02:13/Video by LUMALENSCAPE

Xie Rong also known as Echo Morgan appropriates stereotypes of ‘Chineseness’, and tropes of Chinoiserie and femininity in order to subvert them. Utilising her own body as material, she often works with text written on her skin using red lipstick, black Chinese ink, white ‘ink’ made from jasmine tea, or her own breast milk after giving birth to her second child. She mines her own experiences of childhood, family, marriage and motherhood – and those of her female ancestors – juxtaposing English narration with Chinese traditional folk song to play with her complex hybrid identity. Her work explores the territory of translation: between two languages, between gesture and stillness, between her Chinese past and English present, between performance and image. Her work has been seen in the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Sweden, Egypt, Germany, Portugal, Australia and Korea, Finland.

www.echomorgan.com