马灵丽

褶子里藏着欲望的秘密， 绢本变得不羁。攀向不可能的圣山或是没有尽头的圣殿，必须经过欲望的沟壑，就像任何事物都必会有它的纹理。

马灵丽的同名新作展，相较于2020年在今日美术馆的个展《蹼》为观众带来的生理触感·痛感，这次则弥漫着黑色色情的意味，（*黑色色情文学诞生于二战后，是法国文学的一支，将美与恐怖，快感与痛苦，禁忌与僭越两两混合。代表人物有乔治·巴塔耶（George Bataille），亨利·米勒(Henry Miller)、让·热奈

（Jean Genet）等等，女性作家则匿名出版，记者安娜·德科洛（Anne Desclos）发表的《o娘的故事》，演员卡特琳娜(Catherine Robbe-Grillet)发表的《女人的仪式》），也验证了乔治·巴塔耶这句“美成为欲望的对象是为了让美变得肮脏，不是为了美本身，而为了在亵渎美的确定性中感受乐趣”。

“褶皱”自马灵丽学生时代的作品就初现端倪，这十年间在图像上经过半掩的舞台幕布，拼贴的动物身体，岩石洞穴、晾晒的布，移动风景中的树木，影像作品中的众人裸体颈背等等，坚硬的自然物与柔软的人工织物都不同程度地展现褶皱；东方的褶子，希腊与罗马的褶子，哥特或古典式的褶子，在绢本上表现出平面或立体的褶子, 顺从或不和谐的褶子，直到如今，褶皱摆脱了在具象上的责任，脱离了身体，化身为神性与下流之间的无穷尽的藏身之地。

在此不得不说出艺术家向我吐露的隐秘，十年前她曾在午夜的意大利潘泰莱里亚岛上，在地中海、西西里岛和北非突尼斯之间的海边教堂前感受到覆盖万物的神圣，然而只在一瞬间，伴随灵魂的升华而来的是强烈的尿意。带着渎圣的快感，艺术家面朝北非，完成了这场逾越。“非如此不可”，艺术家说。在这个圣洁的岛上那个夜黑风高的一夜，使她终于明白人们说的，神圣的事物并非人们有意玷污，而是只要存在这一行为，那就是玷污，是亵渎。而神圣对世俗否定，它却也是由否定的东西所决定的。 这应验了关于“色情”(L’erotisme)的说法，“在任何时代，任何地域，神性原则都令人痴迷，让人屈服：人们在神性，神圣之名之下，辩认出一种内在的、秘密的活力”。

所以褶皱的暗中有序，也是凡俗、下流、欲望对神圣的献祭，绢本笔墨天然的雅致，铺陈开的是无法言说的童年一瞥，在成人世界的纱帐外面，艺术家过早完成了“创作者必须是偷窥者”的本份。

（沉沉黑暗那么久远/受辱的肉体早已习惯/但某一天终须打开阴影之门/迈向头几级台阶/寻找光明/在黑暗中认识自我 ——米歇尔·塞尔 Michel Serres）在凡俗的边远处寻找神性文 / 鞠白玉从褶皱开始。

Searching for the Divine in the Mundane Margins Introduction by Ju Baiyu

Start with the folds. In the folds lie the secrets of desire, and the silken surface becomes unruly. One must pass through the furrows of desire to climb to the unreachable holy mountain or the infinite sanctuary, as everything has a texture.

In contrast to the physical tactility and sensation of her solo exhibition "Webbed" at the Today Art Museum in 2020, Ma Lingli’s latest works presented in this exhibition under her name are clouded with erotique noire (*Erotique noire literature emerged after World War II, is a branch of French literature that blends beauty and horror, pleasure and pain, taboo, and transgression. Writers such as George Bataille, Henry Miller, and Jean Genet are known to write in this genre. In contrast, female writers often published anonymously, including journalist Anne Desclos, who published Story of O. The actress Catherine Robbe-Grillet’s Woman’s Ceremony, validates Georges Bataille's statement that "Beauty becomes an object of desire to stigmatize it, not for its own sake, but the pleasure in the certainty of its desecration."

"Folds" appeared as early as Ma Lingli’s student years. Over the past ten years, this motif manifested in the images of half-covered stage curtains, collaged animal bodies, stoney caves, drying cloths, trees in a moving landscape, naked necks and backs of people in her moving images, rigid natural objects, and soft artificial fabrics. Folds with oriental qualities, those found in Greek and Roman visual culture, Gothic or classical periods, those painted on silk either flat or in three-dimensions, smooth and creased, as of now, they are free from their responsibilities for figuration, detached from the body, and transformed into a vast place to hide between the divine and the obscene.

Here I have to disclose the secret that the artist confided to me. About a decade ago, she had felt a sacred energy descending on all things in front of a seaside church at midnight on the Italian island of Pantelleria, between the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily, and Tunisia, at that very moment when the soul was showered by the sublime, she also felt a strong urge to urinate. With the pleasure of blasphemy, the artist faces the North African continent and joyfully releases herself. "It had to be done," says the artist. What took place on that dark and windy night on that holy island made her finally understand the claim that the sacred is not something people intend to defile; insofar as the act exists, it is defilement blasphemy. And while the holy denies the secular, it is also determined by what was denied. This resonates with the saying about eroticism that, "In any age, in any region, the divine principles have always been mesmerizing and overpowering: under which, people recognize the inner and discrete vitality.”

Hence, the folds encompass discrete order, the sacrifice to the sacred from the mundane, the obscene, and desires. The inherent elegance of the ink and brushwork on silk unfolds the artist's ineffable glimpse of her childhood. Being outside the veil of the adult world, the artist has prematurely fulfilled her role of "auteur as a voyeur."

(The darkness was so long ago / the humiliated flesh has acclimatized / although, one day the door of shadows must open / take the first few steps /in search of the light / and to know oneself in the darkness —Michel Serres)