Zhu Zhu: How long have you been in Beijing? 

Jia Aili: Since 2007. Before that, I worked in Luxun Academy of Fine Arts as a teacher, but not a regular one. I did not what my future would be. Then I held an exhibition in Beijing. There was a studio in the gallery with a louver and walls of six-meter tall, one I had been dreaming about. Believing that such a studio was hard to find in Shenyang, I chose to stay in Beijing.   

Zhu Zhu: What was your impression of Beijing? 

Jia Aili: I enjoyed this city. For nearly eight years, I had studied in Shenyang, a dull city. After I settled down in Beijing, I slowed down and dedicated myself to paining. What I saw, heard and did accordingly began to find entry into my works. 

Zhu Zhu: The exhibition was for the works you did in Shenyang? 

Jia Aili: Yes.

Zhu Zhu: Why were those works called The wasteland ? What did you want to convey at that time? 

Jia Aili: They were about my personal feeling about existence. The works did not cover much, but they impressed us as reality, and appealed probably more to the sense, though I’m approaching or studying the sense of vision from the rational and more objective perspective of an adult.     

Zhu Zhu: There was a “narrator” wearing a mask. What kind of mask is it?

Jia Aili: I bought it in Shenyang. Later I found out that it was probably designed in Russia. It was commonly known as snoot. Originally of Russian style in World War II, it was spread to GDR and China and became popular, but it may be out of use now. 

Zhu Zhu: What is it used for? 

Jia Aili: To protect people from biochemical weapons. It is for military use.  

Zhu Zhu: How were you related to the image with mask? Why did you choose such an image? 

Jia Aili: After I graduated, I wished to express with a strong even contradictory image and a forceful point as well. Neo-representationalism used to reign in my field of study at the academy. We focused on paintings human figures and on realistic themes. In this period we did have a lot of life class about human being in the real world. We painted human figures and explored their reality. Then was the Shanghai biennale then, very noisy. Most of the mentally active classmates had decided to gave up painting even before they graduated, and later some of them went to study in France, wishing to take a look at what contemporary art was about. I was no exception then. You may find that most of the works in my first solo in 2007 were different from what I intended to do as a student. Like writing a long lyrical poem, I had been avoiding something that I should have confronted myself with. 

Zhu Zhu: After you settled down in Beijing, you must have experienced a transition in which you might be dissatisfied with and doubtful about your past, and in the meanwhile, the more intense atmosphere and new influence also required you to understand and identify. What impressed you most or what do you think was the most important in that period? 

Jia Aili: After I came to Beijing in 2007, I underwent double transition, from campus to the studio, from my familiar art formula to a new one that could be called my pursuit in art. A lot of paintings came out in these two or three years, but I was satisfied with none of them. It was particularly true of 2008 and 2009. I rejected lots of paintings, and there seemed to be no progress. What had been so clear to me became nothing, and I even did not know how to turn what I could see into a painting. What I used to care about suddenly became meaningless when they appeared in a painting, and worse still, they were weakened, so even a photo looked better than the work. It kept on for some time. Later I turned to installations based on the material at hand, but in vain. The installations turned out to fall short of what I had expected them as material, at least I believed so. Then waxworks and installations of ruin followed. All these works were based on my thinking when I was in Shenyang, at the academy, in particular. My personal experiences changed, so I tried to prepare myself for a better state.  

Zhu Zhu: You were in search for a new identity, that is, your true orientation? 

Jia Aili: I gave priority to realistic subjects. I will keep on. I never hesitated in this respect. I really cared about the works in my exhibition in Beijing. A lot of questions remained unanswered, and they were what I cared most. It dawned upon me that these realistic themes are fictional, but I used to take them as real. It seems that the exhibition detached them from reality and shifted them to delineation of the mind. To be honest, I don’t like it. I prefer realistic themes and I need to reveal something visual. Such a conflict was born of me. Can it be neither unrealistic nor sur-realistic. It is neither a representational nor abstract or intentional. A painting involves a lot of possibilities, but this one is quite clear to the painter. Therefore, I wish to destroy it, breaking away from the past by means of the orientation embedded in the mind regardless of what is implied in the work.

Zhu Zhu: Neither realistic nor surrealistic. Is there any work of yours that falls into this category? I mean, a work that is free from conflict? 

Jia Aili: I’m now doing a large painting. Though unfinished, it seems to me to be leading to a new start, telling me what I imagined may come true. As techniques or concepts, realism was out of date, but it still can, in a light manner, return to the subjects we used to care about, that is, my thirty years as an individual and my understanding of the world over these years or the potential thinking. Such a light and free way, in fact, is ideal to approach the relationship involved in contemporary painting.   

Zhu Zhu: How long did it last? 

Jia Aili: It still goes on.

Zhu Zhu: When did you start?

Jia Aili: From the winter in 2008 to 2009. I have kept painting for four or five months. Another two or three will come out this autumn. It is better to have something as reference.

Zhu Zhu: What is your plan and structure of this large painting?  

Jia Aili: As a painter, I wish to express in my way my expression of the world I know and judge. Obviously no painting in reality can attain that goal.  

Zhu Zhu: From another perspective, this large painting seems to tell me that you aim to keep the synchronicity, in other words, a combination of your memory of the whole life experience. Of course, it is not about everything in your memory, but it is close to what you expected to.

Jia Aili: Yes. 

Zhu Zhu: I notice something common in your works: the horizon with objects put in ruin. It seems to have become your fixed or personalized schema. When did it start?

Jia Aili: Admittedly some of my works are based on the photos I took in Shenyang when it was renovated. I incorporate them into my works as subjects. Except the invented scenes, such as the several divisions of Lenin, they all came from my imagination. There were no such scenes or perspectives. In 80% of the paper document, nothing is associated with ruin, disasters or the doomsday. They are about artists, old photos, photos of some events, industry, and landscape. Hardly can we find one dealing with disasters, negativity, or violence. It’s me who overlayed them. Logically speaking, it is my realism, as it is my work reality, along with all the material I use. It is my realistic subject and my reality leads to it naturally. Quite a few of my friends said you were depicting disasters, some even thought it was about the doomsday, some believed it to be a subverted history, and others were reminded of the shift in the geopolitics at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s due to the clothing and even symbolic images. When I work, however, I usually try to avoid getting disturbed by my sentiments. These photos and document, the reaction between the makeup of these human figures and their tableau made me objective or made the viewers subjective. Therefore, I think it is rich in realistic significance. In other words, it still makes progress with the subject matter I am familiar with. It is also an evolution, for I believe at least it moved a step further in the work I always care. When I abandoned realistic subject matter soon after I arrived in Beijing, I found myself a idiot capable of nothing and my painting was not even as forceful as image painting.  

Zhu Zhu: After you came to Beijing, you wished to replace the emotional delineation about the youth with a more detached tone. It came from the objective world, but when you try to deal with it in the painting, you become subjective, that is, these images or scenes in your memory were superposed upon one another as you just mentioned. Even if you believe it to be the realistic scene you had planned, it wasn’t due to human judgment. The viewers thought it had something to do with disasters and the doomsday. To me, the ruin scene made up of fragments of different periods in your memory seems to represent your awareness of identity. You might have borrowed a lot from realism, but it was limited to medium only, for your sense or feeling had completely disrupted the conventional relationship between realism and the world. 

Jia Aili: This understanding is the source of my interest and motivation. I found I could no longer present the real life scene in a vivid way as my teachers and idols did. It was quite clear. Standing by a ruin or a group of young people, I had tried to paint what I saw lifelike, but I failed, and I even could not persuade myself to make any efforts. What it will be in the future, I don’t know. Anyway, it is impossible now. I don’t want to stand in opposition to reality but to mix with its chaos.  

Zhu Zhu: As to the principal difference between you and your teachers, as well as your idols, can I say that they record objectively while you are more subjective, if I can use the word “record”? 

Jia Aili: More than a time I stood before Bosch’s（Hieronymus Bosch）works. Now matter how old it is, I believe to paint is to add more secretes, more implications, more interest, and I think I can. Artists are said to be capable of telepathy, but for me, there is a distance from it, but I believe I can. I’m ambitious about painting for its inclusiveness. 

Zhu Zhu: With tremendous changes, China was turned in to a chaotic and rich reality. Have you feel the impetus to be a witness and to paint it?  

Jia Aili: No matter how objective history is, there are always secrets behind for me to explore. Its implication keeps beckoning at me. Marx ( Karl Marx ) said that all history is modern history.   

Zhu Zhu: Such a reality is indescribable. 

Jia Aili: The same is true here.

Zhu Zhu: What do you think is your knack, or what do you think is the most important attitude? 

Jia Aili: I became more and more aware of the value of independent thinking. When one thinks independently, he will find it worthwhile to analyze what reality brings him. What is space? And what is time? Does it have dimensions? Is it a container for existence or occurrence? Does the soul exist? Is it material? If not, what is it then? Is the soul psyche? Can the soul stands independent of the human body? How does it exist? Does the soul remain after the human body ceases to be? Does the soul exist before it gets incorporated or implanted in the human body? How is the soul related to the human body? Is psyche another name for the brain? Is the body merely a concept in the psyche? Did it exist in the past? If no, is there anything other than the momentary existence now? If it existed, then where was it then? Was there a universe? Will there be a future world?    Do various possible worlds coexist beyond the tangible world we are living in? Does it make sense to talk about what might be possible? These questions were on my mind when I have the documents on hand. As time went, I came to be interested in different interpretation or fabrication of history. It is likely to have some effect on my painting. When it comes to our understanding of modern history, I can’t even find a book or a ready document that can give it an accurate account. What we find is usually fragmentary and sometimes irrelevant. I felt it a challenging job to mix them and reanalyze them. In other words, our age, our geographical situation and condition are more complicated than our education at school could train and discipline. Our education does not provide us what was needed there was such a complexity. I’m not up to that as individual, but I am fascinated by this idea. 

Zhu Zhu: What influence does the Northeast have on your painting as a heavy industrial base with peculiar regional feature? 

Jia Aili: The influence is subtle and unavoidable, and it goes on forever in my life. Like a brand mark, it belongs to reality, my reality. 

Zhu Zhu: I find some of your works seem to be mere description of machines. Can you tell us  something here?

Jia Aili: It is based on my life experience. Before getting married, my mother had lived with her parents in the countryside as farmers, where farming was the only the yardstick for everything. After my parents got married, my mother worked in a state-owned printing house. I used to have lunch with her in her workshop until I began middle school and she retired. There were all kinds of large machines with functions I did not know. I wonder if it was such context of life that bring about the changes in her mental world, then my life. It is my experience of life. The man-made machine is sense without sense of self.   

Zhu Zhu: I feel Duineser Elegien is different from your previous works. Why?  

Jia Aili: I did not choose the title until later. I prefer not to name my works, as I don’t think the name and the work have much bearing except for the seeming resemblance in the mood. My impression of Lenin ( Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ) was only limited to the series by Marx and Lenin neatly stood in my grandpa’s shelf. When he dies, the street he lived in was demolished for relocation, so these books had to be sold to secondhand book sellers, as nobody could read them. They are my memory. Duineser Elegien is really an exception. It is simply an image, but what I wanted to focus is the refrigeration pipe and the compressor under. When the compressor was turned on, the pipe would freeze into icicle, reminding me of the chilly north in my childhood. It looks calm, but it embodies my strong emotion. 

Zhu Zhu: Nostalgia of your childhood. 

Jia Aili: Yeah. On TV I watched the tanks driving onto the Red Square in 1990. It was shown on only one channel. The soldiers were behind the tank. I remember it clearly. I watched it as a spectator at that time. Many years later we came to realize what a big event it was—something enormous collapsed. We were too young to take it seriously, but this event did affect us a lot. I used to be very envious of Theo Angelopoulos for his Ulysses Gaze. There was so rich dramatic and overwhelming materia available to them, including the grand historical material. Compared to their works, what I’m doing was nothing but mediocre. In my 20s, I was driven by a strong desire to do something dramatic, as I was crazy about rock and roll. I was as stubborn as my desire was overwhelming, and I always ended up in disappointment. Our change is like an internal injury, which, though causing little pain, gradually and slowly, changes us in a repressive way, both our body and mind. There is a wild expansion of land in the north, reminding you the scene in that film.   

Zhu Zhu: Where did paint on-the-spot? 

Jia Aili: At the Platform China 2008 group Show. I painted on the wall. 

Zhu Zhu: How long did it take you?

Jia Aili: A night, for the next day there was the exhibition. 

Zhu Zhu: How did you get that idea? 

Jia Aili: In the beginning when I could not paint in the way I expected in Beijing, and the exhibition was to be held, I could not stand my works. I did not know what to do. Karen Smith was the curator and I had agreed to contribute something. They had given me a large wall. What can I do? Anyway I could not make myself satisfied. Then it occurred to me that I might as well paint my state of mind genuinely on the wall. To paint on the wall was something different. This idea could look acceptable. Suffering from cervical syndrome then, I also put my x-rays on the wall. Actually, I painted my life on the wall. Though it was not what I expected, it turned out to be fairly cool. 

Zhu Zhu: What do you think is positive and negative in the Western criticism of you or contemporary art in China? 

Jia Aili: Take our interview or articles they have written about me for example. I found if they are really interested in the artist, their observation, including the work and the life, is quite in detail

Zhu Zhu: Is there anything political? 

Jia Aili: There are probably different sets of mind. 

Zhu Zhu: Does it result in any deviation in interpretation of your work? 

Jia Aili: I think such kind of political interpretation might gradually become important to me in the future. It is what I think now. 

Zhu Zhu: You said that you recite incantations. What is that?

Jia Aili: I am very curios about everything mysterious in incantations, and I even had some experiences. Can the forces behind them coincide with the truth I have been pursuing in my work? It is too early to predict. To measure the real essence with my life, I may never reach it, I’m afraid.

Zhu Zhu: You said when you were young you lived in Dandong across Korea, you were dreaming about that country. In many of your works, I found there is a horizon with a blurred vista in the distance. It is dreamlike and futuristic. What does the vista mean to you? 

Jia Aili: To blend the imagination in space with time, the vista might mean the initial stage of life. In my imagination, it could be a young or initial state. As you said, I wish to incorporate something original in it. I think we still can do something meaningful after we break the limit of space and time. That is my next step, including, of course, some techniques. That’s it.