Dismembered body parts piled up in a bathtub, two human torsos conjoined by their intestines, and a rotten decapitated head being held by the victim themself. Perusing the works of Xie Kun can be a spine-chilling experience.
However, Xie insists that her work isn’t all that dark—everything is done in good fun. “Originally, I just wanted to draw for my own amusement, nothing stressful,” she says. “So I turned to one of my old diaries for inspiration, which was filled with random trash talk, over-the-top short fiction, and observations of the neurotic things in my life.”
Under her imagination, these journal entries were transformed into severed appendages and disfigured bodies, all of which she’s stuffed away into little tin trays. Together, these disconcerting yet whimsical scenes form the stop-motion series outu jihua, which can be roughly translated as “Project Gross-out.”
残肢断臂堆满了浴缸、连体人扭曲的大肠相互牵扯，被砍下的头颅发黑腐烂，却啃噬着自己的乳房……谢堃的作品，看久了有点让人头皮发麻。
但谢堃自己是很坦然的，她并不觉得这些意象黑暗，反而有点好玩。“这些作品初衷是我想画一些玩的东西，没那么沉重，所以我就摘了一本以前的日记，里面都是我日常吐槽的话，瞎想的小故事，身边人的神经病事。”带着一丝有趣、一丝诡异，谢堃砍掉了笔下人的头颅、四肢，折叠了躯体、经络，然后把它们放到了一个个铁皮盒子中，给了它们一个脑洞大开的名字，叫《呕吐计划》。
While finishing up her graduation project at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, a strange concept began brewing in Xie’s head: she wanted to draw a scene in which she turned herself inside out. “I envisioned something like grabbing myself by my tongue and pulling my innards outwards, like a razor clam,” she says. “This scene would represent my inner world becoming one with the external world, the dissolving of ego, and plainly speak to the idea that I’m no different from everything else. I’m just a different combination of atoms.”
With this newfound perspective on herself and the external world, she felt a sense of accord with the universe at large. “Nature, the cosmos, faraway galaxies, and everything that we may not fully fathom, we still have a connection with them.”
毕业于央美的她，在当时毕设创作时候突发奇想，本意是想画一个把自我由内而外翻过来的场景图——“就是自己抓着自己舌头，把自己里外翻个个，和洗蛏子一样，这样呢，你以前所有认知的外部的世界就是你自己本身了。”谢堃笑说，“这种感觉让我觉得自我在分解消散，好像我和其他东西并没有什么差别，只是组合序列不同。”
这么内外一翻转，把内里的东西吐出来、外面的东西裹进去，谢堃觉得：“自然、星河、宇宙那些你不了解的所有规律，似乎都可以和自身挂上钩。”在《呕吐计划》中，她把所有能展开联想到的物件和意象都融入进去，谢堃笑说连生活心态都好了很多。
Through her stop-motion GIFs, Xie molds her overactive imagination into something tangible, albeit grisly. After finishing an illustration, she carefully cuts them out into separate pieces, setting them up and making them squirm and slither against the tin tray that’s served as the stage for the entire project.
谢堃喜欢用手工的方式去呈现自己大脑剧场：手绘的“肢解图”，被她以各种出其不意的方式在小铁盒里运动，再用定格动画的形式拍出来做成 GIFs，仿佛在狭隘空间里成就了一场迷你独幕剧。
As a biology and animal lover, wildlife is a consistent source of inspiration for Xie. Take, for example, her recent subject of infatuation, the octopus, with their smooth, slimy skin that shines like latex. “Even when you cut off a leg, it’ll still keep wriggling,” she says. “It’s like every individual molecule of their being has a life of its own.”
These brief infatuations with certain animals often result in bursts of creativity, where traits she associates with them find their way into her work in absurd ways. During her octopus craze, she created a six-armed man in the likeness of her favorite cephalopod. While rooted in absurdity, Xie’s works are a way for her to appreciate the natural world on her own terms.
谢堃喜欢自然，喜欢动物，但不是那种局限于想要拥有的喜欢，她更喜欢有些动物带给她的“刺激”。比如有阵子，谢堃说她疯狂地喜欢章鱼，黏黏光滑的皮肤，紧身衣一样的质感，“即使切断了也在蠕动”，这种原始而饱满的生命力让她讶异万分，“仿佛每个细胞都独立存在似的”。于是乎，超尺寸、变色、隐身、蓝色的血液，预言能力、高光、冷灰色……这一堆词从她的大脑里一次次“呕吐”出来，看似毫无关联，但相互组合在一起，就组成了谢堃作品里荒诞却有趣的元素，比如，八爪鱼一样的异形人。谢堃始终在从这样博大的自然科学里找方向，试图用自己的方式呈现自己理解的地球万物，那既是她创作的乐趣所在，也是意义所向。
Xie says that viewers don’t need to dig deep to understand the meaning behind each piece. Ego death and the meaning of existence are themes that she mostly hones in on. Whether it be different genders, different species, or differently mutilated body parts—are these varied arrangements of molecules and atoms all that different from one another?
Having studied public art in school, Xie initially believed that all art should be made for the public, made to impact audiences or offer new perspective. But in recent years, she’s gained a new understanding of what art can be: it can be more inward-facing, designed with the artist’s own interests in mind. This swimming against the current can result in art that’s more meaningful for the artist, and ultimately, become works that are equally memorable for viewers.
这些呕吐元素大杂烩的“意义”并不难找到，谢堃说，她关注的主题是“自我消散”，即人的界限。在作品里，谢堃不会刻意去强调人的性别或物的意象，男人或女人、人头或兔头、白骨森森或血肉健全的躯体，有何分别呢？从前学公共艺术出身的她，起先觉得艺术家有很多作品是“要为大众画的”、“要提供一种新的视觉感受或者新的观察事物的观点”，但这几年自由艺术家的经历反而让她有所感悟：艺术作品所带给人的冲击，未必一定要体现在服务观众的层面上去解读，很多时候，谢堃觉得如果能完全随着自己的心，做一个不随波逐流的自己，就已经是一个艺术家非常难能可贵的品质了。
