In Just a Blink of an Eye, 2005/2019

Based in Shanghai, a rapidly changing city fueled by commerce, Xu often merges cultural references in a multidisciplinary practice that encompasses performance, sculpture, painting, installation, and video. His performance work, in particular, frequently employs the body as a kind of instrument. Here, the body is a living sculpture, protected and displayed like the other works on view in MOCA’s galleries.

The performer of each posture is poetically arrested in time and space. The physicality of the performance is uncanny—the performers’ feet are seemingly planted firmly on the ground, while their bodies extend in stunning mid-air backbends. In its original presentation, Xu cast members of marginalized communities, such as migrant workers, so that bodily suspension became a metaphor for liminal civil status. This political valence resonates urgently in 2019, both globally, nationally and locally. In Just a Blink of an Eye is ultimately a work about the fragile balance of life.