Jin is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the medium that is the most appropriate to express the idea. She is interested in the condition of human existence, and how people perceive the reality.
Born in 1997, Jin grew up in Wuhan, China. She has lived in France, Canada and is currently based in London.
From Plato’s cave to the Matrix, we have always been looking for a way out of the simulation to the “reality”, again and again we fall into the loop of the simulacra we created ourselves. We perceive reality with things we can grasp as reference points: objects we can touch, sound, smell, movement… I’m interested in the factors that impact people’s perception.
The threshold between the real and the unreal is blurrier than it ever was. If we could pretend physical things are more real pre-pandemic, now we can’t anymore. The real and the unreal are co-dependent, they intersect with each other and prove each other’s existence.
What is photography in 2021? When a photograph doesn’t need to be taken, the simulacra becomes the simulation. The camera was never a truth machine, but things and light needed to happen in order to create an image. When photography no longer needs a camera, where can we then set our reference points to prevent ourselves getting lost in the never-ending loop of simulation?
I created a parallel universe of my home using computer generated imagery. When you can only stay at home, the physical reality outside of the house doesn’t matter anymore. No one knows nor cares about my physical being, I am only seen through the camera. Human-created technologies are part of our reality.
In this CGI film, the camera follows a reference point - a red mass navigating in this reality. The red mass can be anything and nothing. It only reflects the person who is looking in to it.
What do we know about Space travelling? And how do we relate to this subject?
Humans are fascinated by Space exploration, but most of times we learn it through TV or the Internet. Our reference points to Space travelling are based on media contents. Most of us can’t relate to the actual physical experience of Space travelling when we think of it. I always thought the washer has some similarity to the capsule on the spaceship: similar shape, both airtight, both have futuristic aesthetics… more importantly, we can’t relate to the experience of being inside it, we only ever observe it from the outside, just like we do with Space ships. They almost take two sides of the extremity: on a level of scale, the washer is as close as it can be to us physically, and Space travelling is as far as we can imagine. This sometimes make me wonder: maybe the Space is just some kind of a washer to another dimension.
