Mocube is honored to present artist Zheng Jing's third solo exhibition at our gallery, "The Invisible Woman," showcasing her persistent new body of work in recent years. Represented by the series "Writing 1," these works embody countless repetitions, day after day, light and darkness, life and time, willpower and dissipation. This text documents a written exchange between Mocube and Zheng Jing regarding the exhibition. In the following interview, "Mocube" is abbreviated as "M" and "Zheng Jing" as "Z."

Repetition and Existence

M: Your practice spans diverse media—writing, sewing, counting—over more than a decade. In works like-97311 and6482561, you transform time and labor into visible numerical symbols through extreme acts of repetition. Is this repetition a way to confront the void? Does it represent a kind of ultimate purity? How do you view the relationship between the "futility" in repetitive labor and the myth of Sisyphus?

Z: To me, repetitive labor resembles farming—year after year, the cyclical motions of tilling, weeding, and harvesting. This monotonous process persists indefinitely... I recall a documentary about young athletes’ training routines I saw years ago. Every day, they repeated the same movements—leaping, spinning, landing—in endless drills. Each repetition pushed physical limits, striving to transcend boundaries. It’s this raw, moving struggle for breakthrough that captivates me: the very human dimension of existence within the act itself.

Sisyphus pushing his rock is an act of conscious choice—an absurd, endless repetition. What occupies his mind? Through this choice, does he construct his own rhythm within the predicament? Achieve transcendence within limits? It is an individual’s choice. The salmon’s migration, too, is an instinctual "decision," reminding me of Kierkegaard’s philosophy of individual choice and perseverance in adversity. At times, I envy those with faith; their certainty allows them to live without anguish, anchored to their coordinates regardless of merit. My artistic practice might be my own "migratory instinct"—leaving traces of existence through repetition, unknowable yet inevitable.

M: Your exhibition "The Invisible Woman" and theHome^n series transform traditionally feminine labor—sewing, housework—into art, yet the title emphasizes invisibility. How does your use of intimate objects like stitched bed sheets and T-shirts both reveal the hidden value of women’s work and critique its marginalized social role?

Z: During breastfeeding, I experienced a remarkable "synchronization mechanism"—my body would often leak milk just before the baby cried, as if perfectly attuned to her needs. This physical response made me acutely aware of womanhood and motherhood, revealing how fulfilling real needs requires immense invisible labor. The repetitive drudgery of daily life mirrors the repetition in my art practice. Yet you persist in your choices—yes, it’s exhausting, demanding precise perception and dedication, but this labor is often dismissed as "just how things should be." I select intimate bedroom objects to document the gradual erasure of self in this process. How does one find gaps of time to create? Where is the balance? I’ve deliberately maintained a tenuous connection to art-making, like the finest silk thread. With limited means, I stay sensitive to life’s rhythms, stubbornly leaving quiet traces through these clumsy methods. The unresolvable conflicts within seem mirrored in that "synchronization mechanism"—art becomes both human necessity and salve. An outlet. A way to make the invisible visible.

Embodiment as Medium

M: You’ve described how "the body is both material and labor itself." In works requiring intense physical engagement—shaving hair, stitching, writing—how do you conceptualize this symbiotic relationship between body and artwork? Is physical expenditure a means to verify existential reality? And do you intentionally amplify the symbolic link between repetitive labor and feminine endurance?

Z: In the past, people measured time in tangible, bodily terms—"the length of a smoke," "the time it takes to eat a meal." Even phrases like "the snap of a finger" (弹指一挥间) root time in physical gestures. I find this fascinating: time perceived not as abstraction, but through the immediacy of the body.

In my artistic practice, the body and the work exist in mutual dialogue. During my student years, I embraced mistakes, experimenting freely with materials while constantly questioning: Me? Who am I? What can I do? For-97311 (counting my hair), I began with a seemingly trivial curiosity: How many hairs do I actually have? At first, I doubted my ability to complete it, but my body gave me the courage to persist. The act of counting transformed into a performative trajectory—with each strand numbered, I conducted a self-diagnosis, making visible what was once overlooked. Every recorded digit became a testament to the body’s repetitive motion, where value and physical practice synchronized. In the photographic series I Am Not a Good Nature, I confronted the body’s limitations. We often pursue an idealized "nature" within our bodily constraints—a pursuit that may remain forever unrealized. This work explores the tension between bodily autonomy and conscious control, and how the body responds to change.

M: In your One Millimeter series, you first draw guidelines with a ruler, then fill them in freehand—a process you describe as "freedom perpetually bound." Does this simultaneous rebellion against and reliance on rules metaphorize the eternal human struggle between order and chaos? Your practice embodies the dialectic of "rule and rebellion": artists must engage with structure to transcend it, thereby revealing deeper existential truths.

Z: Yes. In the One Millimeter series, I select the smallest unit on a ruler, first using it to delineate a precise 1mm boundary—establishing the finite scope of this act. Then, I put aside the ruler and attempt to draw freehand within this predetermined millimeter. It’s difficult. Within such a tiny interval, the line may easily breach the border, requiring absolute focus to remain confined to that single millimeter. Freedom is not boundaryless; on the contrary, what appears as constraint is, in fact, about how one navigates distinct paths within each predefined limit. We all exist within given structures—how do we calmly locate our own coordinates and find the rationale for our actions? Within that one millimeter, rules and coordinates, rebellion and courage, order and chaos... It’s like a counterintuitive choice, a necessary response after soberly recognizing the finite scope of the individual.

The Metaphor of the Line

M: In The World as Will and Representation, you used interlacing blue lines to convey the "complexity of reality’s structure," while inGreen Lightning, the gaps between dashed lines symbolize the leaps of thought. How does the line assume a narrative function in your work? Are you attempting to map the strata of the mental world through the order and chaos of lines?

Z: Returning to the individual—in the latter half of 2024, I spent my time untangling the "relationships" surrounding me. The silence ingrained in my bones rendered me an "outsider." That period was dark, arduous, filled with helplessness and exhaustion. InThe World as Will and Representation, the details up close appear limited, even chaotic—a mess of overlapping blue lines. But when you step back, farther back, until the entire composition comes into view, the truth you witness in that moment wounds you. It’s difficult to escape. Language and text feel unsafe then, because interpretation is logical, rational, yet we forget that logic itself is rooted in humanism—and the individual is inherently precarious. Hence, loneliness. Art, at such a moment, conveys precisely what I cannot articulate. Or perhaps it’s a self-prescribed remedy. That’s why this form of expression carries deeper narrative weight—though none of this is what I truly wish to discuss. I’m no good at socializing; I merely expand slightly beyond my confined space, leaving faint traces of "myself" within the framework of my lived experience.

The Visualization of Sound and Time

M: You mentioned how the scratch of a pencil synchronizes with the ticking of a second hand, or how the sound of eye drops echoes firecrackers. Why focus on this connection between sound and time? Are you attempting to transform the invisible flow of time into tangible, physical traces?

Z: Initially, while writing a ten-meter-long series of "1"s, the scratching sound of the pencil on paper fascinated me. Throughout the act of writing, it was a constant presence. Yet when I paused, its abrupt halt made time itself stutter momentarily. This bodily engagement transformed time from something invisible into a rhythm synchronized with my physical movements. The second hand’s unwaveringtick-tock—each repetition identical in frequency and sound—creates a continuous, cyclical motion. But how does one unfold the actual process of time?

Years of gripping a pencil to write "1" have slowly formed a mountain-shaped callus on my middle finger—this peak makes time visible. One day, while sorting through my children’s old clothes with my mother, she remarked: "You never see them grow; you only notice their clothes shrink." In life, changes in clothing sizes mark what we can see—an immediate measurement—while the imperceptible yet real process of growth remains hidden. The recorded numbers and the shortened hems are tangible evidence, abrupt realizations of transformation. Every Lunar New Year, I practice the ritual of paper-cutting, much like the ancient tradition of "replacing old door charms with new ones." It’s another way to freeze time. In my home stands a pencil cactus, once barely 10 centimeters tall, now towering over me. The deepening grooves on its trunk are legible scars—time made manifest. Since my daughter’s birth, I’ve taken her photo daily with the same camera. My shutter-click hasn’t changed, nor has the subject, yet the person in the frame is undeniably different. This is visibility. Time itself is invisible, but through the traces of repetition, it becomes tactile. Sound, too, renders it "ekstatic"—a physical resonance. All things, bound by their "fundamental conditions," ceaselessly transform...

M: After becoming a mother, you’ve created "fragmented intervals of divided time." Has this segmented mode of work reshaped your understanding of art and life?

Z：Motherhood plunged me into the unknown. My daughters are themselves, yet I glimpse shadows of my own mother—an interdependence where every unfolding moment feels unfamiliar. Amidst this constant interplay and flux, I ask: What is real? A shifting context? All I can do is navigate each occurrence, striving for "a provisional balance" through maximal yet fragile control. Every attempt to grasp this equilibrium stems from the raw demands of relationship—a reality that unsettles me, precisely because it refuses fixed values. It’s elusive, liquid. Like a tape jam disrupting chronology, it shatters time’s continuity and stability. Slowly, through endurance and will, I learn to parse it, to respond to "the real of the moment" within my limited agency. This fragmentation aligns with Manuel Castells’ "timeless time," where past, present, and future dissolve into demand-carved shards. In this nonlinear state, I compress slivers of life to create. Discipline becomes pruning shears—taming chaos to render the invisible palpable. The work evolves organically; I never consciously emphasize "the feminine." Being a woman, the experience seeps into my body unbidden. Here, force meets fluidity: like yoga’s breath and stretch, you soften, spread open, absorb disruption, and coax balance. Not by resistance, but by yielding to the current while steering.

Sacralizing the Mundane

M: You’ve stitched vision charts, shoe insoles, and other mundane objects into artworks, imbuing their latent "orderliness" with a sense of authenticity. Why choose these overlooked items? Is your handcrafted intervention an attempt to reveal the transcendental within the everyday?

Z: At the time, I was reading Xiang Biao’s works, trying to grasp his concept of "the disappearance of the nearby." Then the pandemic hit. Confined at home while organizing my closet, I stumbled upon a white T-shirt with its tag still attached—an object I’d seemingly forgotten. This white tee was both a mundane item and part of my "nearby." We rely on such familiar things yet often render them invisible. Do we unconsciously neglect or obscure what’s closest to us? I chose to stitch into it with the simplest thread, a tactile act to reclaim the "nearby" presence. When I finished, the once-familiar shirt felt strangely distant—it transcended its utilitarian existence (as mere clothing) and became a new kind of "object."

Near Huangjueping’s old campus, there’s a woman at the market known only as "Pickle Sister." She’s spent her life repeating the labor of making pickles. One day, I watched her sweat-drenched, slicing her cai (stem mustard) with rhythmic precision, mounds of washed and dried vegetables piled beside her. "No rush," she smiled, "just cut slowly…" Year after year, her focused devotion to each motion bridges the visible and invisible. This repetitive work has woven her into the neighborhood’s fabric as a steady, warm presence—everyone’s trusted "Pickle Sister."