Moment 2012-2014

Mingjun Luo's world, the outcome of tough negotiations between two cultures1 and thus powerfully symptomatic of the multiplicity of the modern world – the "creolised" world, Édouard Glissant would call it – is essentially dialectical: open-ended, fluid and relational, without ever reaching a synthesis that would stand as a kind of final, fixed result. Whichever medium she chooses, her use of it is always relevant and unexpected. In her pencil drawings she deploys the classical (Western) techniques of hatching and areas left in reserve. But far from zeroing in on a motif or expressing it directly, she prefers to suggest it by indicating only the shadows. On the other hand, in her photography – almost exclusively comprising nocturnal images – she focuses on the lit areas.2 Her media complement each other while retaining their independence. The entire oeuvre has to do with transition, the exchange between light (often no more than a twinkling) and shadow, solid and void, order and chaos,3 appearance and disappearance, precision and vanishment. As memory strives to catch up, the trace appears along a path and the reflection conjures up an originary but totally elusive object.