J Jiang

Born 2000, Shanghai.

J Jiang is a conceptual artist based in Chicago and Shanghai.
Bachelor of Fine Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023.

Being human means navigating approximately 35,000 conscious decisions daily. Educated internationally, I have developed a heightened awareness of how decision-making shapes personal trajectories and collective futures. As an artist, I explore the complex relationship between individuals’ mentality and tangible reality. My research-based practice synthesizes their dynamics by creating unclassifiable existences, playing with game structures, and constructing novel scenes at specific sites. I focus on human agency in the posthuman era through sculptures and performances. They build upon Gilles Deleuze’s claim about art for provoking new sensations, and Pierre Huyghe, Jesse Darling’s narration approaches for overlooked history and realities.


Inspired by Stefan Zweig’s Decisive Moments in History and Max Tegmark’s Life3.0 which outlined 12 potential future situations involving superintelligence based on 12 human choices, I delve into the fragile yet monumental mentalities and ideologies that have altered or will alter the course of history. Through practice, I reimagine how subjects interconnect in unrevealed realities, recuperating lost human sensations from unchosen choices and reckoning their long-term impact on broader life cycles. I created an installation at the SAIC Gallery entrance featuring an assemblage of materials prohibited by the gallery parameters, inviting viewers to confront the unseen and censored within the context between academia and the market.


Taking myself as the method, I begin my research by identifying fragments of reality that suggest alternative potentials: ongoing events, crafted objects, or established orders. They can manifest as an unidentified symptom, the mechanism of a slot machine, or one contested institutional rule. I examine its historical layers, material properties, and perception logic by mapping. Through making, I modify and recompose elements to highlight moments of vulnerability, ephemerality, and creativity—qualities that often defy conventional archival methods. My work emphasizes choice, creating conditions rather than singular visual outcomes. Physically, I visualize forces like gravity, randomness, and entropy as they interact with materials to discover the invisible systems that maneuver human perceptions. Socially, my work highlights moments of struggle, particularly when political and technological structures limit human experiences.

CV





EDUCATION
2023 BFA Sculpture & Performance, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US

REWARDS
2024  World Less Traveled Awards, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US


EXHIBITIONS
2024 Ambition!, West Bund Art Center (Hall N), Shanghai, China
2024 mute BODY, Alte Handelsschule, Leipzig, Germany
2024 windy HOME, Tour de Franz, Leipzig, Germany
2023 Fall Undergraduate Exhibition 2023, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Gallery, Chicago, IL, US
2022 Round Ken, Solo Exhibition, Ming Art Museum, Suzhou, China
2021 Hangzhou 3rd Good Art Fair, Special Artist Exhibition, Notting Hill, Hangzhou, China
2020 Artbash, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US
2018 WHO AM I, Museum of Contemporary Art 3rd floor, Shanghai, China


PUBLIC ART
2023 Analog, Art on The Mart, The Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL, US


PERFORMANCE
2024 ‘Approaches to be an Experience Thief’, Third Room, Leipzig, Germany
2023 Impact Performance Festival 2023, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Gallery, Chicago, IL, US
2023 Cho-Cho-Cho-Choo Station, Comfort Station, Chicago, IL, US
2023 Orange Ladder, No Nation Art Gallery, Chicago, IL, US
2023 READINGS, Watershed Art and Ecology, Chicago, IL, US
2022 White Box-LOVE, ‘A Place We Long For’, The Research House for Asian Art(RHAA), Chicago, IL, US


RESIDENCY & FELLOWSHIP
2024 PILOTENKUECHE International Art Program, Leipzig, Germany


REVIEWS & PUBLICATIONS
2024 Avena, Kintija, ‘J Jiang: Expanding into material’, PILOTENKUECHE International Art Program Press


WORK IN THE FIELD
2024-present Workshop Lecturer, Perrotin Gallery, Shanghai, China
2024-present Art Curriculum Designer, Art Teacher, MAKE ART, Shanghai, China
2024 Exhibition Assistant, HUA International, Art021 Shanghai, Shanghai, China
2022-2023 Graduate Assistant and Technician, Performance Department, SAIC, Chicago, IL
2022-2023 Teaching Assistant, Contemporary Practice, SAIC, Chicago, IL
2021-2023 Founder & Art Teacher, Shanghai Baishi Educational Technology Company, Shanghai, China
i.e. An art curriculum held in museums in Shanghai, which collaborates with multiple art museums and galleries in Shanghai including Perrotin gallery, Power Station of Art, Fosun Foundation, West Bund Museum.
2020-2021 Art Teacher & Art Curriculum Designer, MUMA K12 Art Center, Shanghai, China