Photo by Malu Xin at T.H.E.M.

Second Gaze

Set within an imagined future space station, Second Gaze stages an encounter between a scientist and an “other pair of eyes” born from their own creation. Rather than proposing a speculative narrative about future technology, the work constructs a suspended field of perception—one in which time slows, movement recedes, and vision itself becomes the primary site of tension.

The work resists being read as conventional science fiction. It does not unfold through plot or revelation, but through a series of reflective confrontations that unsettle the distinction between origin and replica, subject and object. As these boundaries begin to dissolve, the image no longer functions as a transparent window onto a fictional world; it becomes a mirror that destabilizes the act of seeing itself.

Within this carefully controlled environment, the artificial and the authentic, the rational and the intimate, are not positioned as opposites but as interwoven conditions. The clinical order of the space contrasts with subtle bodily gestures, allowing identity to emerge not as a fixed essence but as a shifting surface shaped by perception and response.

Second Gaze unfolds as a visual meditation on consciousness and selfhood. By placing the viewer in a recursive loop of looking and being looked at, the work poses a quiet but persistent question: when a gaze is returned by something we have created, who is seeing—and who, ultimately, is seen?

Artist’s information

Born in 2000, Guangzhou, China. She Lives and works in London, UK

Jingjing Xu's artistic practice consistently engages with the question of how women confront adversity. Her methodology emphasizes dialogue and recognition: through interactions with the self, nature, and society, the artist achieves individual liberation and subjective reconfiguration. This practice not only responds to forces of domination and normalization but also embodies a relational politics grounded in interdependence and mutual recognition, proposing art as a critical intervention for reflecting upon and restructuring gendered social frameworks.

jing.x0909@gmail.com | +44 772 089 1520

Personal Instagram: @Jiing.x