The photos on the left of the piece are the standard work photos of a female police officer, the 30 repetitions implying a “disciplined” identity as a police officer. In such severe and regulated repetition, life follows an unchangeable model, yet in the oil painting to the right of the photograph, Yu Hong depicts the space that the individual “she” works in — the setting of the reception and identification window at a police station, a scene we would see entering an average Chinese police station. The center of the image could be the waiting area, with the entrance on the left. Through the entrance we see a girl in a short skirt waiting by the door, her head down looking at something. In the distance we can make out a police car, and plants and houses even farther away. On the right of the painting stands a policewoman, separated from the room by a latticed window. Next to her is a computer, the room bathed with light from the plant-filled window. Though seemingly a very normal scene, in fact “her” spirit and the conditions of her life, along with traces of her career and life, emerge in the space.
