Cang Xin is an artist born in Suihua, in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang in 1967. Surprisingly, Cang Xin was a performance artist originally, and studied at the Tianjin Academy of Music in China. He currently works in China, and creates art pieces that I feel have a similar style to my own work. A specific collection I am referring to is in the Deborah Colton Gallery, and in this series, he talks about an identity exchange. In his images, he is photographed taking the identity of others physically, by wearing their clothes in their environment, and stands next to them, half naked and almost out of place. I get the feeling that both himself, and the one he takes the identity from feels somewhat naked, in both mental state and physical place. In relation to my own work, I put emphasis on the clothing as a way to express the mental state I am going through, and it is good to hear and see that others are using physical objects such as clothing to help successfully explain the internal struggles and problems of people. Pictured below are some of the photographs of Cang Xin’s work.

His work really shows a different way of expressing a similar issue that I am dealing with. It’s given me an idea of how I could express my identity problems in another way. I thought of creating portraits of me from others, in a collage style piece. Maybe in the future, I will explore this style a little more.

http://www.artnet.com/ag/fulltextsearch.asp?searchstring=identity¤tCategory=Artwork&page=3