Interview a Conversation with Hung

Hung Liu, The Ocean is the Dragon’s World, 1995. Oil on canvas, painted wood panel, metal support rod, and metal birdcage with wood and ceramic appendages, 97 x 82 1/2 x 17 5/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in part through the Lichtenberg Family Foundation

This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Interview

A Conversation with Hung Liu

Joann Moser Hung Liu is a leading figure in the con- Hung Liu was born in 1948 in temporary art world, in both the United Changchun, China, which was the capital States and China. A resident of the city for the Japanese puppet dynasty of United States since 1984, she has created the exiled Emperor Pu Yi. Her father was imagery that often draws on historic a captain in the Nationalist Army (the photographs, traditional Chinese paint- Kuomintang) of Chiang Kai-shek and ing, and her memories and experiences as was arrested, when Liu was an infant, by an artist growing up in China during the Communist forces as the family fled the era of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. city looking for food. After Changchun In her work, Liu continues to consider fell to the Communists, she returned Chinese traditions and symbolism as well with her remaining family. At age eleven, as the lives of immigrants to this country. she impulsively accompanied her aunt Her training in the socialist realist style of to Beijing, where they survived the mass painting is apparent, but the drips, circles, famine resulting from Mao Zedong’s and symbols that overlay her figures Great Leap Forward. Liu was sent to the introduce counterpoint and complexity countryside when she was twenty years to the images. Her handling of space and old for proletarian “reeducation” during dramatic juxtapositions of scale and form the Cultural Revolution. She completed invigorate her paintings, drawings, and school and began to teach art at an elite prints with the vitality and immediacy of school in Beijing. After several years, she contemporary expression. attended the Central Academy of Fine Because of the prevalence of female Arts, the leading art graduate school in figures in her work, both historic and China, majoring in mural painting; she contemporary, Hung Liu has sometimes began teaching there in 1981. been claimed as a feminist artist. She In 1984, after waiting for four years, has expressed some affinity with this Hung Liu received permission to leave movement, but a lack of comfort with its China for the United States and has lived limitations. Instead, she talks most often here ever since. After studying at the about her work as a reaction against and Visual Arts Department at the University a transformation of the socialist realist of California, San Diego, she began teach- tradition. She seeks both to preserve and ing art at the University of North Texas, to destroy the image, to find meaning in Denton, in 1989, and the following year the past for the present. at Mills College in Oakland, California,

where she remains on the faculty. In sixty-three, for two and a half days in 1991 she became an American citizen 2010 to conduct an oral history inter- and returned to China for the first time. view for the Archives of American Art, She has maintained close ties to China Smithsonian Institution, in her Oakland, through visits, friends, fellow artists, and California, studio (fig. 1). Surrounded by daily telephone calls to her mother until her current work and personal memora- her mother’s death in September 2010. bilia, we discussed a broad range of topics. She has exhibited actively both in The following transcript represents a selec- China and the United States, from tive and edited version of that expansive San Francisco to Miami, Los Angeles interview. to New York, Santa Fe to Ketchum, Idaho; Kansas City; and Baltimore. In JM: Do you remember when you became a recent article in the New York Times interested in art for the first time? You (January 20, 2011) on contemporary were just a small child in Manchuria. Chinese women artists, the author cites Hung Liu as an outstanding Chinese HL: I was always interested in art, maybe American artist whose work is now because my grandfather had a collection in the permanent collections of the of painting and calligraphy, and a collec- Whitney Museum of American Art, the tion of postage stamps. Whenever he had Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the time, he opened his treasure cabinet and Smithsonian American Art Museum started carefully, sometimes with little and the National Gallery of Art in tweezers, to handle the stamps. I always Washington, D.C., among many other watched. And when I had a piece of chalk notable institutions. or something, I drew things on the floor, I met with Hung Liu, a vibrant and on the wall, and if some friends visited, welcoming woman who has just turned I made their portraits. They said I was

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). really good, that I could capture their long hair, like those little melancholy special features (fig. 2). artists—very clichéd. I joined that club and we did whatever—still life, portrai- Later your grandparents and mother ture, landscape, anything. By the time joined you in Beijing. You all lived with I graduated, I said, “I really love art.” your aunt and uncle, and you had to But my mom, my family, everybody, adapt at school. said, “Art? It’s not a serious career. You can always do art in your spare time. When I first got to Beijing, I was like a The serious jobs are like doctors, engi- stranger from another part of the country; neers—for a girl, it’s very good to study even my accent from Manchuria was dif- medicine.” I thought, fine. I want to ferent. I needed to relearn, to catch up. save people’s lives; I can be a surgeon. Eventually I was a very good, top student During that time, the majority of stu- in everything. When we reached gradu- dents studied Russian because of the ation, we had to take a civil exam and relationship with the Soviet Union—we fill out our wish list for schools. My first called it our “big brother.” But my mom choice was a girls’ middle school attached encouraged me to study English. She to Beijing Normal University. It was the said English was more universal. I was best school in the country, a boarding working on a big exam to enter medical school. Mao Zedong’s daughter went school in 1966 when the Cultural there, Deng Xiaoping’s daughters. When I Revolution happened. Two years later, got an acceptance letter, I couldn’t believe my generation, even younger and older it. The myth is, the moment you walk into people, we were all sent to the country- that school it’s guaranteed that when you side or military farms. I worked in the graduate you will go to the best university. fields for almost four years. My best friend, who now lives in New Jersey, went with me to that same school. How did events unfold?

Did you have any exposure to art in When the Cultural Revolution started, school at this point, or did that come nobody realized the magnitude of it. Then later? one day, in the People’s Daily, which is the party’s paper, there was an article criticiz- When I got to this girls’ school, we ing so-and-so—a Peking opera play, you had an art club taught by our art class know. We didn’t take it seriously. But this teacher. He always wore a scarf, with opera was about an official in the Ming dynasty who dared to speak out on behalf of the people to the emperor: “People are suffering. It is not right.” Mao Zedong got angry at this. He was always paranoid that the people, especially the intellectuals—writers, musicians, artists—would use metaphors, ancient fables, and folklore to attack the party. That is how it started. 2 Hung Liu, childhood drawing, We were preparing to enter 1953. Photo, courtesy of the college, and then school artist was interrupted, classes

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). were canceled. And the Dazibao—the And they were all tough on the stage: big-character posters that were every- “So-and-so used to be the teacher, you where—targeted all the leaders [of respected the teacher, the teacher had the the school], like the school principal, podium,” but now it was, “So-and-so, superintendent, and the dean, criticiz- come over here!” We watched this verbal ing them for promoting nonproletarian and physical criticism of the teachers. education. We learned that what we had One summer day—I was not there but learned was all wrong—that it was Feng, a dear friend told me about it—there Zi, Xiu, or feudalist, capitalist, or Zionist was an incident involving our principal, garbage (fig. 3). who was in her late forties maybe. There was a giant coal pile—every winter we There were attacks on teachers and used coal to heat the school. A small principals? group of girls—they were Red Guards from our school—forced her to climb I remember that all the Red Guards— to the top and come down. And they the mostly higher-ranking officials’ threw ink over her and trash cans and daughters—got permission to attack the then forced her to climb the stairs of school leaders. The girls all suddenly put the building many stories high, up and on faded soldier uniforms [which they down. At some point, she collapsed acquired] because a lot of their fathers and had a hard time breathing. The were older military officials, like People’s next morning, the loudspeaker in every Liberation Army (PLA) generals. And classroom announced that the principal the girls’ hair was cut very short or tied had died. We heard a sanitized story, but up in the air with two rubber bands. years later I learned the horrible details. The young girls just tried anything to humiliate her, to torture her. Because it was summer, she wore a white shirt, so the coal dust made her look like a ghost. Finally, after a long, senseless humilia- tion, she died.

Terrible.

Suddenly, overnight, the revolution had started. I saw these Red Guards, who had been very modest, even shy girls, friendly and sensitive, who studied hard, and who respected their teachers, transformed into demons. They used a belt to beat people and even set up a detention center at school. If somebody said someone was a bad guy, they had the right just to drag you and beat you to death. It happened in many schools. In one school, I heard, a principal was 3 Hung Liu poses with brushes forced to lie in the public toilet with all in hand in front of a portrait of the flies, the smell. It’s easy for a dicta- Chairman Mao created by older tor to persuade—you don’t have to do students at the Beijing Film Academy, ca. 1966. Photo, cour- too much to get young people excited. tesy of the artist Suddenly, all the landlords and the

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). teachers, the intellectuals, were enemies toward the end of the year, Mao said because they didn’t teach you the right that educated youth should go to the thing. And then young people become countryside to get reeducated. monsters. Where were you sent? You were from an educated family. You were among those not considered good First I was assigned to go to Inner party members? Mongolia. But I was an only child, the only young person in the family with my I never met my father. He was a captain grandmother, mother, aunt, and uncle. in the Kuomintang. I was six months old There was a policy; we needed young when he was taken prisoner by the PLA. people at home to take care of elders. But during the Cultural Revolution And we said Mongolia is a little too far. people said, “Your mom was married to Finally I was sent to a distant suburb of him. She must have been influenced by Beijing, maybe fifty miles away. him, and you live with your mom. So you were influenced by this enemy.” What was your day-to-day life like when you were in the countryside? Were you allowed to stay in Beijing, or were you sent out to the country? You didn’t have anything like a city schedule. In the morning, you listened For several years, all the schools were to the big loudspeaker. During harvest closed. The revolution started from the season, you got up at around 2:00. schools, then went to factories, to other You walked to the field half-asleep, workplaces, and then to private homes. with three people as a team. Instead of And whenever anybody said this family using sickles, we used our bare hands might have some counterrevolutionary to pull the wheat from the soil because materials, and that family has problems, we wanted to save the bottom part of the Red Guards could just break the the wheat to use as fuel for cooking. door down and beat people and turn Morning dew was very muddy—when your house upside down. Everybody was the sun rose and shone on us, the dew afraid. Finally, the factories closed. They and soil mixture on our clothes and made nothing but revolutionary pins, faces made us look like clay figures. In buttons; I have some in my collection. the winter, we would dig trenches in the The whole country was chaotic. Nobody frozen soil. produced anything. Eventually, Mao Zedong wondered how he could end Did you have any time to do any sketch- this. Who is going to teach at schools, ing, or anything that resembled art? if the teachers are enemies? What are we going to do with the students, with We loved political meetings. Whenever all those people? Then he found the the party had a new policy, or when Mao solution: send them to the countryside Zedong said something new, the whole because the countryside is so broad and village got together for the announce- so vast that it can absorb them all. There ment. The best thing was it still counted you won’t make money; you just become as a working day, but we didn’t have one of the laborers. And the peasants to bend over and sweat in the fields. will oversee your reeducation, seeing if So everybody came out, sitting outside you love the party, seeing if you love in this gathering area. Really, nobody Mao Zedong, using physical labor to listened. And I started to sketch—an reeducate and brainwash you. So in ’68, old woman sitting there, maybe making

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). shoes, or breastfeeding a baby, or people just napping. That was my chance (figs. 4, 5, 6). I loved it—nobody cared, you know. In the city everybody knows what you are doing. But in the village they cut me some slack.

You mentioned that you did some sketches there after Käthe Kollwitz. Were there other Western artists whose work you had access to?

My early art knowledge was mainly from Russia, and then there was some European influence, of course, like Michelangelo’s work, especially his drawings. We heard of big names like Picasso or Matisse. But in general, there was no systematic learning through school. I saw more Russian art than anything else for political reasons since the ’50s. I remember reading from [Anton] Chekhov, [Nikolay] Nekrasov, [Nikolay] Chernyshevsky, and, of course, [Leo] Tolstoy and [Aleksandr] Pushkin’s poems. I remember I saw paintings of [Vasily] Surikov, a history painter. It was pre–Soviet Union and [Ilya] Repin painting Tolstoy plowing the soil as a peasant. There were a lot of that kind of history painters who put one family, one person’s life, against a big historical backdrop. I saw a movie about Surikov when he was doing a big historical painting of—I think, one of the princesses [The Boyarinya Morozova; fig. 7]. She had a different religious belief or philosophy and was martyred. She was on a plow in the snow, passing through this neighborhood street. 4 Hung Liu, sketches of villagers And the movie showed how Surikov tried in Liang He, 1968–71. Charcoal to find the right model for the figure of a and/or pencil on paper. Photo, courtesy of the artist beggar who was included in the painting, because these Russians painted from live 5 Hung Liu, sketch of buildings in models. They had to have the real person. countryside, 1968–71. Charcoal and/or pencil on paper. Photo, So finally he found a man whose job courtesy of the artist was digging graves, who drank a lot and was kind of messy, and he got him into 6 Hung Liu, Self-Portrait, 1968– 72. Charcoal and/or pencil on the studio. To me, the Russian painters, paper. Photo, courtesy of the especially history painters, they were artist almost like today’s filmmakers. They

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). went out to look for the best character to that. I stayed up all night developing play roles. I respect that a lot. photos. And then I carried my pictures like my harvest back to the village. They Did you have access to a camera in the were all amazed. So my camera became countryside? kind of popular, and I took quite a few photographs. The majority of the nega- I did have a camera, not mine. I was a tives I never had time to develop. I had poor student in the countryside. But I had negatives from the late ’60s wrapped in a few friends I met during the Cultural an old handkerchief. Just last year [2009], Revolution who were already in college. a graduate student scanned the negatives They went to a film academy, where they and made some prints for me, and I prob- studied things like stage-set design. They ably have sixty or seventy of those. were sent to a military farm, which was a harsher situation than the countryside. How did you finally wind up going to One of them had a little German box art school in China? camera. And before they were sent away, he was so afraid it would be confiscated I worked in the field for almost four that he asked if I could keep it for him. years, and then school reopened. But I said sure. One day I said [to myself], they only would take students from I have a camera, I can use it. I bought a Gong Nong Bin—workers, peasants, and roll of 120 film. I can’t remember how soldiers, considered the leading classes I learned to load the film or take the in China. I was in the countryside, so photos, but it was scary, exciting. One even though I was not from a peasant older person was worried and said, “The family, I was a peasant myself then. It only time in my life I had my picture just so happened that Beijing Teachers taken was when the Japanese occupied College had a professor looking for new [northeast China] I had to put it on my worker, peasant, and soldier students in ID card.” I said, “Hey, that’s for the our area, and I met him. I think he was enemies; I’m your friend.” So I took a Chinese literature teacher. I said, “Do pictures. And when I had a chance to you have anything in art? I would really go back to the city, I asked my mom to love art,” and I even probably showed help me with some money then—I didn’t him some sketches. He said, “Let me go 7 Vasily Surikov, The Boyarinya make a penny. I went to a secondhand back and ask.” It was like a miracle. For Morozova, 1887. Oil on canvas, store, bought a primitive enlarger—a the whole county, a really big county, 9 ft. 11 11/16 in. x 19 ft. 3 5/16 in. The State Tretyakov Gallery, piece of wood with a rod and a lens you they added one position to accept an art Moscow can adjust. And I learned how to do student. I went through some hoops, but I got in. And I remember on a very dusty country road before he got on the bus, he said to me, “I hope you study hard and you get in. Also, make sure”—I was already twenty-four—“make sure, during your time at college, you are not allowed to have a relationship,” meaning don’t get involved with boyfriends and only concentrate on your work. I said, “I can guarantee you this; this is so precious, such a unique opportunity. I will work hard and follow the rules.” I never saw him again. And then I went to this—it was not an art department,

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 8 Hung Liu with rifle when she was a student in the Revolutionary Entertainment Department at Beijing Teachers College, 1973. Photo, courtesy of the artist

9 Hung Liu painting a landscape while at Beijing Teachers College, ca. 1973–74. Photo, courtesy of the artist

but a Revolutionary Entertainment Beijing Teachers College. And then we Department—for three and a half years. graduated. We were all assigned by the A lot of times, we were taken to the government to different schools to teach countryside, the factories, and the army, art—not college classes, but elementary the military camps to serve them. For or middle schools. Because I was the only example, once we went to an asylum child in my family, they could not send run by the state, and we stayed there for me too far away. They sent me to one of weeks doing an exhibition that showed the city districts to teach art. the comparisons between the old society, meaning before the Communist Party, How many years did you teach then? when people suffered and were homeless and handicapped, and how happily they From ’75 to ’79, about four years. lived now under the socialist system. In During that time, CCTV, China Central some of my sketchbooks, I have soldiers TV station, contacted me because it was in their military camp. We went over a very famous Soviet-style school. They there. We learned how to shoot rifles, asked if I could teach children art on every day lying on the dirty ground to television. I felt it would be very hard. learn how to aim at the target (fig. 8). But they said, you can write everything We were not taught either Eastern or yourself and then do it. So I did that for Western art history because all those art a few years until I had my son. I was the histories were considered tainted and not only Chinese artist teaching art on TV. revolutionary, not proletarian enough. I remember one teacher gave a lecture and In 1977 you got married, and the said colors have a very clear class mark. next year you had your son. Was your Politics was the guidance for every pro- husband in art school, too? fession, and art and literature were just part of the revolutionary machine (fig. 9). No, no. He was in his first year in college when the Cultural Revolution inter- This was a teachers’ college? rupted, and then he ended up working

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). at an observatory because of his interest was set by the government, a special in astronomy, which he had started in passport. You had to go there, study, and college. We were married for a short come back. And she said, “I am going time, a year. After my son was born in to this place, San Diego. And it is in ’78, we had a lot of differences. In ’79, I California.” “Oh,” I said, “See if there is decided to go to grad school. I applied to an art program.” Then I gave her very few, the Central Academy of Fine Art, where less than ten, slides. She went to the visual the focus is mural art, and the Central art department at UC San Diego and met Academy of Arts and Design, where the Manny Farber. He said, “I don’t think she focus was training drawing professors, has a chance.” But then I got accepted. and I was accepted by both. Murals were more interesting to me because at Manny Farber became one of your that time China was barely at the end professors? of the Cultural Revolution, and at that time a new airport was just finished. Manny Farber, his wife, Patricia My teachers did the mural there, and it Patterson, and then David and Eleanor was a big thing. One of them was later Antin, and Allan Kaprow. I didn’t know criticized because what he did was a Dai any of them. I got a letter from Mary water festival, where everybody pours Anne Cooper that said I was accepted. water on each other and the clothing was They sent me forms for a visa and admis- transparent—some women looked nude. sion, all this paperwork to go to the U.S. and study for a master’s degree. So that is Wet drapery [laughs]. So you learned when I started my long journey to get a mural painting. I assume you worked on passport. I applied to my art department a very large scale. in school, to the cultural ministry. At every level, they tried to stop me. The I worked on giant pieces of butcher school finally forwarded it to the cultural paper, using a ladder. At that time, I did minister. The man was really rigid. He see some Mexican murals because they said, “Why do you want to go there?” It were so famous and political, really close was very hard to copy documents then, to socialist. And I got a chance to go but I got the paperwork, and they said, to a Buddhist cave—actually, it is “Well, we have to wait.” You know, wait a grotto—along the old Silk Road, and wait, and then at some point, maybe called the Dunhuang Grotto, in the in the second or third year, the paper- middle of the Gobi Desert [where work got lost. They said, “We don’t know she traveled twice]. where it is.”

After this, you wanted to go to art So it was several years before you were school in the United States? able to leave.

Yes. When I was graduating, maybe Almost four years waiting for a passport. a year before, my best friend—Bing Chen—from middle school got a chance During that time, you studied callig- to study at UC San Diego. She lives raphy, stamp making, and painting on in New Jersey now and is still my best ceramics. friend. In the past, only a few people, government officials’ children, went to Yes, from an old scholar, a private tutor the Soviet Union. The United States was whose name was Niu Jun. I said I could our enemy. But then the policy changed, not waste time waiting. My file, every- and China’s doors opened. Bing’s status thing, was still at the Central Academy

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). of Fine Arts, but I was neither assigned David Antin. Then I met Mary Anne a job nor allowed to go to the U.S. So Cooper, the graduate student coordina- I used the time to study. Every week I tor. All those years I had seen her name; went to see him. I still have my notes, I didn’t know what coordinator meant. like flashcards. I didn’t pay anything. He And then Allan Kaprow, always in his always gave me gifts—old paper, books, uniform: blue jeans, a blue jean jacket, a a good brush—and sometimes I did cal- brown leather briefcase, and his famous ligraphy for hours and then showed him. beard. Moira Roth, the feminist art The Chinese use red ink to circle the historian, was the first one to visit my good parts. And meanwhile, because I studio. She invited me to speak to her still belonged to the Central Academy of class on the feminist art movement. I Fine Arts, I went to places like a ceramic remember this was the first time I saw factory because ceramic tiles are one of the famous installation Womanhouse— the possible materials for murals. Finally, the kitchen, all the stuff was really a friend said, “See if you can leave from eye-opening. She asked me to talk about Hong Kong.” That didn’t work, and the situation for women in China. She when I was in Hong Kong I wrote an left the next semester for Mills. Now angry letter to the cultural minister. we have been colleagues at Mills for the And then the guy, a very nasty man, the past twenty-one years. At UCSD, I sat cultural minister, on a hot summer’s day in on one of Allan Kaprow’s classes. I went to my mom’s apartment, knocked remember he showed a Cézanne still life on the door, and said, “Can you ask and talked about how it has the wrong your daughter to come back? We will perspective; I understood some because allow her to go to the U.S. for graduate there was a visual image. He talked for school.” I went back to Beijing, got the a long time. At the end of the course I passport finally—it took almost four wrote a paper about Matisse’s Dance. years to get a Chinese passport—and There are people holding hands. There is then it took just a few minutes to get a one gap and I compared that gap with visa at the American Embassy. Michelangelo’s Creation. And then I took one of his classes on happenings. Who was taking care of your son at I didn’t know he was famous. We had this point? never heard anything about him in China. What is a happening, I won- My mom and her elder sister, my aunt. dered? Other words like “performance” He was six when I left China. First and “installation” I looked up in the time flying, never got on an airplane. dictionary. I was thirty-six years old, I had several big suitcases. I had four years of tooth- This is where you met your husband, paste. Everybody said you needed to be Jeff Kelley. prepared. At the last minute, my son grabbed me and said, “Mom, don’t go.” He studied art criticism and theory, and And that broke my heart. I had to go. he had a studio pretty close to mine. [Hung Liu’s son joined her in the United I asked him, “So what does it mean, States when he was eight.] installation?” He said, “Meaning you take over the whole space. You can do What happened when you arrived and anything you want.” The point I remem- went to the art department? ber very clearly was that you could use the ceiling, the floor, anything. Jeff was I landed in L.A. in late 1984. The first originally from Nevada. He worked person I saw [at the university] was at the Nevada Arts Council. He said,

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). “There is a university gallery in Reno liberating. Probably when I think back, about to be torn down. If you want to the way I improvise while I paint today do a show there, you can do anything goes back to that moment in the dump you want.” So in ’85, I did. I painted with Allan Kaprow at UCSD. on the walls and I painted on the floor, the first time I experienced the so-called You began teaching soon after art school. installation. I painted images inspired Can you tell us a little bit about what you by the Dunhuang Caves, Taoist iconog- adapted from your own art education? raphy. It was cartoonish, graphic. And then the gallery was torn down. Another Jeff got a job as the director of the art time, I did a painting inside a stairwell gallery at the University of Texas at at the UCSD campus; I think it’s still Arlington, and I taught a class as an there. Outside in the grass, Nam June adjunct professor. They asked me to teach Paik did a Buddha-and-TV sculpture, Chinese art history, which was really maybe not so permanent, but I did challenging because I am an artist, not a permanent mural in the two-story an art historian. Plus I had to teach in a building, the whole way up and down. foreign language. But it went well because I did it probably during spring break, I decided that when I am teaching I would in less than a week by myself, so I hurt just be myself and tell them I am an artist my elbow. I got a cortisone shot like a and this is how I see art history. So I wounded soldier. The doctor said, “Do taught the basic things, but I also asked you have tennis elbow?” I said, “It is the students to do calligraphy, some stone mural elbow.” I experienced that kind rubbings, and even some brushstrokes. of freedom for the first time in my life. In Chinese, we say shao shusheng jiao, And also I learned that art is not just a meaning when you teach you also learn at thing, an object. In one of Allan’s classes the same time. After that, I was hired by he took us to a waste dump near the the University of North Texas in Denton school, and from his truck he unloaded as a painting teacher, an assistant profes- an old sofa and then buckets of paint. sor, tenure track. And then a new job was I think also he moved something from open at Mills College because Jay DeFeo inside the dump, like an old door passed away. Moira Roth, who was chair, from a house. And about five, six of called one day to ask if I would be inter- us—probably I was the only graduate ested. It was a great chance to go back to student—were there. He said, Okay, California, which I feel is really my home. you can do it. Do what? Do whatever you want. I was shocked. You know, Then you made the move. in China, you have a concept, you do a drawing, you do all the preparation Yes, that summer. My mom happened to before the painting, all this academic be visiting us. Jeff towed his Chevy Nova stuff. I thought, What am I going to do? on the back of a big truck, and I drove a A young man opened the paint, the can, van with my mom, my son, and our cat. and then he just poured it onto the door, Jeff went back to Texas to finish his last the sofa. I was confused. I looked at the semester, and I started teaching. I learned professor, waiting for instructions. He that teaching art is unpredictable, espe- didn’t say a thing. He didn’t say, no, you cially when you have graduate students. cannot do it or this is that way. So very Somebody’s work could be about 1950s reluctantly I said to myself, I can make memory in America—Americana—and a mess too. What color? I have no clue. others can do something about abor- I grabbed a brush, I started to think . . . tion; the subject matter varies. With what am I going to do? That was really time I learned to trust my intuition, my

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 10 Hung Liu, Resident Alien, 1988. experience. As a teacher, I am careful with Let’s focus on your artistic practice now. Oil on canvas, 60 x 90 in. San the so-called demonstration because your Perhaps we could start with some gener- Jose Museum of Art, Gift of the Lipman Family Foundation demo in China is the teachers showing alities about how you begin a new work you how to do things—as if it is the or a series. only way. Now, the main thing I show students is how to loosen up, how to get As an artist I would like to be a witness themselves into the work, to concentrate, of my time, but I also feel that subject but not as if my way is the only way. I matter and objectivity, like the way I have to emphasize that over and over paint, the physicality of my work, is again. The best students have their work, just as important. It has to be a good and nothing looks like my work at all. marriage. In 1988 I had a residency at I also sometimes give them homework, the Capp Street Project [visual artist like one painting a day, one drawing a residency in San Francisco]. I stayed in day, and then I show them I do it myself. a studio designed by David Ireland, the It is doable; you have got to do it. There original Capp Street building. Within is a Chinese and an American way. The a three-month period, I could develop American way involves a lot of freedom, an idea and execute it there. I didn’t individuality. But on the other hand, I have a precise plan, but I was think- want them, especially younger people, ing, as a new Chinese immigrant, that to respect art making as very hard work. San Francisco has one of the biggest There are no shortcuts. Chinatowns. It might be interesting

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). to look into it. That is where I did the dressed up in suit, tie, and wedding painting Resident Alien, which was also gown. These could have been rentals, but the name of the Capp Street installation. people still said, “That is not proletarian. It was off-site—in a downtown office You must be a capitalist landlord.” And building that still had some raw, open official photographs were published only spaces. A lot of what I did was on the after censorship. But I remember the wall. And then the paintings were saved. big urban fire in the Oakland Hills, in My green card (fig. 10) was one of the 1991, where people rescued the family thirteen paintings I did during my resi- photo album first. So I felt almost an dency at the Capp Street Project. urgent need to look at a lot of historic photographs. This has always been the It was quite large—about 60 by 90 way I work. A year after the Capp Street inches. Project, the violence in Tiananmen Square happened, in 1989, and I did Yes. And the painting is oxymoronic. a painting based on a photograph of a You are supposed to carry your ID card bound-foot woman from 1900. in your wallet. My painting made the image large, like a billboard. Instead of This is Goddess of Love, Goddess of my real name I used “Cookie, Fortune” Liberty (fig. 11) from 1989? because the fortune cookie is something I was fascinated with. The first time I Right. That was right after Tiananmen went to a Chinese restaurant in the U.S., Square, where a statue called the Goddess they served fortune cookies. Everybody of Democracy was made and displayed in said, “You should know what that is.” the square by the sculpture department But it was invented by a Japanese man at the academy where I went to school. near Golden Gate Park; it has nothing to This reminded me of all those beautiful, do with the Chinese at all. And the term strong goddesses, female figures, like the “resident alien” is also interesting. What Statue of Liberty and Delacroix’s Liberty is alien? How is an alien also a resident? Leading the People. In the past, be it When I got to the U.S., it happened to liberty or freedom, however, a goddess in be the beginning of Sigourney Weaver’s China was really crippled and had bound Alien movies. An alien is from outer feet, not really able to do anything or space. So that term is also an oxymoron. hardly walk. So that was the true condition of liberty after June 4, 1989. I had a Oh, really? photograph that a friend, the artist Jim Pomeroy, bought in Chinatown, and I I looked at many old photographs of decided to use that image to represent the Chinatown while I was working at Capp goddess of liberty. When I was young, Street. I did paintings based on old I remember this relatively old lady who photographs of Chinese railroad workers, had tiny bound feet—we asked about a Chinese family, and immigrants to the it, and she unwrapped her bandage. It U.S. I borrowed photographs from the was horrible. This photograph reminded Wong family in San Francisco. These me of those. The standard size of these old black-and-white historic photographs disfigured feet was three inches—men provide information, they are witness to a called them the three-inch golden lotus. particular moment in society. You know, I thought it was horrible, like mutilation, we burned a lot of family photo albums a constant reminder of women’s hobbled during the Cultural Revolution because, condition. A blank blackboard slate hangs for example, our family had grandparents on the wall next to the canvas and below who got married and had a photo taken, it a straw broom: these symbolize the

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). erasure of memory and the subordinate How did you come to make the painting status of women (because the Chinese Odalisque in 1992 (fig. 12)? character for “woman” involves a kneeling 11 Hung Liu, Goddess of Love, figure and a broom). Also, the soldiers As I mentioned, I started being more Goddess of Liberty, 1989. Oil on cleaned up Tiananmen Square with interested in historic photographs. In canvas with wooden bowls, slate, brooms, to clean up the bloodstains. 1990, the first year I got the job at Mills and a broom, 72 x 96 x 12 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Museum Finally, the broom functions symboli- College and the seventh year of living League Purchase Fund cally like a big paintbrush. in the U.S., I returned to China for the

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 12 Hung Liu, Odalisque, 1992. first time. I got a faculty research grant almost like a mail-order catalogue—all Antique architectural panel, and went to Beijing to try to find more the prostitutes had made-up names like lacquered and painted wood, ceramics, 52 x 95 x 8 in. Private historic photographs that survived the Little Lily and Lotus or Pearl. I was collection Cultural Revolution. I went to a Beijing fascinated by the images, but also curious film archive and asked for “anything about what kind of life they had lived. old.” They brought out cardboard boxes We all know that the majority of girls with loose photos and some that were were sold by poor families. Girls were not mounted and captioned in Japanese. I as precious as boys; they could not carry looked at the titles of the photographs on the family name. After I returned to and one said it was a famous prostitute the U.S., I looked at them over and over in China. The first time I saw those kind again after I made the prints. Of course, of photographs, they were so bizarre, photography was invented in 1839, intro- with the prostitutes placed against a duced to China, and photographs were photo studio backdrop—even the Eiffel immediately used by the imperial court Tower—with various props or European to make royal portraits, but also by the accoutrements, like bicycles, organs, sex trade. It’s really interesting, not just telephones, and there were even two the new device introduced to China, the prostitutes sitting in an airplane. I took camera, but also the concept, the whole photographs of every page I came across. aesthetics of commercialism imported It seemed like a very exclusive, elite list into China through photography, which of young women, some kind of small copied Western and classical portraiture group for clients. I turned the pages traditions, like women reclining on a

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 13 Hung Liu, Old Gold Mountain, daybed, most of them looking into the I wanted to make associations with 1994. 200,000 fortune cookies, camera, returning the gaze of the client. Western portraiture. I also wanted to train tracks, oil on shaped canvas, So I decided to refer each piece back intensify the theatrical component, so I dimensions variable. Installation to some Western origin, like Olympia, made them big and incorporated shelves at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Photo Odalisque, and other famous paintings and architectural fragments onto the courtesy of the artist like Raft of the Medusa and Mona Lisa. canvases, as well as props, like wooden

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). flowers, paper temple money, and sculp- The installation was fun to do, and the tures of some sort on the shelf, both to curator, Steve Nash, said at the opening make them into altars but also like offer- that it was “the biggest order of fortune ings, like a stage. This is a whole body cookies in history and the smallest order of work I did from the early ’90s to the of railroad track and ties.” I ordered the mid-90s. track and ties because so many Chinese laborers had worked for the railroad. These canvases are shaped at the top. In a way, the railroad made a cross, Does that relate to the shape of the like a crossroad, and in the middle of photograph? the cross was the old gold mountain. In my hometown in Manchuria, my Yes, absolutely, the templates of the great-grandparents and some relatives are photos at that time often had little buried in the middle of a cornfield. Each rounded corners, like arches or shoul- one is a mound like this. So this was ders. Maybe because I have lived through both a memorial for dead Chinese labor- so many different movements in China, ers but also a glowing gold mountain. witnessing a lot myself, I feel like history That was a good project, fun to do, and is not just in the textbook; history is everybody could relate to the fortune more like a verb. It can be re-reviewed, cookie. But also it was part of history, the and someday it will be changed when memory and the loss of memory of the you have new evidence, and it depends Pacific West. on who writes it. So I have been very interested in historic reference in my Your painting The Ocean is the Dragon’s work. I have also been interested in World (frontispiece) from 1995 is in the historic objects of culture—like fortune collection of the Smithsonian American cookies—that were new to me. In Art Museum. It has an intriguing title. 1994 I was given a whole gallery in the de Young Museum in San Francisco for In China we have a tradition, especially an installation. As I mentioned, fortune for the new year, where we always cookies were not made in China. But balance two pieces of writing—pairs they also took the shape of funny little of words on each side of the door, like gold nuggets. And the Chinese name for “heaven to earth,” “black to white.” You San Francisco is Jiùjīnshān—Old Gold read from right to left, the traditional Mountain. Chinese way. This title comes from one of two couplets: “Ocean is the dragon’s So that explains the title of your world” and “Heaven is the crane’s home.” installation. The emperor is always considered the son of heaven, and he has the dragon: it Exactly, Old Gold Mountain (fig. 13)— represents young, male, imperial power. and that’s why even the football team Here ironically we have the Dowager is called the 49ers. It all goes back to Empress Cixi, who was in power for the history of the Bay Area, how people decades in the Qing dynasty. She was the came to the U.S. during the Gold Rush phoenix, representing imperial female to capture the American dream, to make power. So when she was in power, she money, to find gold. Some of them only reversed some carvings, like the dragon found fortune cookies! So I used over and phoenix, and put a phoenix on top. two hundred thousand fortune cookies She was hated by a lot of people, who to make a symbolic gold mountain said she was cruel. But on the other with a crossroads of railroad tracks hand she was a pretty powerful woman. running beneath the big golden pile. In a photograph I saw of her, she wore

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 14 Hung Liu, Mu Nu (Mother and an opulent gown. Against the backdrop looser painting, I attached a birdcage to Daughter), 1997. Oil on canvas, of a peacock and a lot of decorative the canvas right in front of the empress’s 80 x 140 in. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, components surrounding her, her face robe. This symbol might express her posi- Missouri, Museum Purchase almost disappeared. I emphasized her tion in a patriarchal, feudal society: still robe, her jewelry, her backdrop, even in the cage, no matter how powerful a her jade fingernails. But her face I woman she was. did very lightly, very pale, and it feels overall like her face is less important Let’s move on to a painting you did than the symbolism of her power. And two years later called Mu Nu (Mother I attached the two couplets on the side and Daughter) (fig. 14). panel. When this painting was bought by the National Museum of American After I did a whole series of paintings, Art [now the Smithsonian American like Last Dynasty, using a lot of pho- Art Museum], I realized that they had tographs, of the emperor, the empress another portrait of the Dowager Cixi in and even the nanny, the eunuchs, I the same collection, done by Katharine wanted to move on—I looked at more Carl, an American woman painter, in candid photographs—not people posing 1903. Katharine Carl had to change in the studio, but in ordinary life. her painting according to the empress’s They’re going about their business but taste, so she made a painting almost like they’re also struggling in what I call the a puppet. I saw the photograph of this mythical poses of, in this case, extreme painting. Her face is smooth, like a little manual labor. Mu Nu is one of those. porcelain doll—young and spotless and A mother and daughter, they’re pulling everything tightly painted. In my much a boat upstream with ropes. The boat

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 15 Hung Liu, By the Rivers of is not in the picture. They’re walking When you start making a painting, Babylon, 2000. Oil on canvas, in the shallow water on the rocks and do you begin with sketches, or do you 78 x 114 in. Private collection the mother is leading the way. It’s a big work directly on the canvas and then painting, almost life-size. When I was make changes? painting it, I realized the gap between the generations, but also the ties that I shuffle my photographs, just look at bind them. The riverbank, the water, them over and over again. I take them are very abstract actually. I used more on trips, especially long flights, from and more washes, and the paint just California to New York, from San drips over. It’s like when you return to Francisco to Beijing. A lot of time I also photographs and memory, sometimes have a sketchbook. I just quickly sketch, you try so hard to focus that it’s impos- thinking, What if I were to do this sible to focus sharply. So this painting painting eight feet tall? opened up the space for me, and a lot of the space I deal with actually rather Is it too much of a simplification to abstractly. I like the simplicity and the say that you work so large because symbolism of it. When I was painting your early experience was on murals? this in the old studio in Oakland, my I’m thinking of a painting like By the mom visited me. I said, “Mom, it’s Rivers of Babylon (fig. 15). like us.”

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That’s one part of it, a very important food. They have their basket. They’re part. But deeper down I have also been tired from their travel, and standing influenced by revolutionary billboards: on their right side is a boy holding a if you want get your message across, you bowl trying to help himself. What I have to make an image big and bold. did differently, of course, was to make On a physical level, I like to do bigger up all the colors and switched their paintings. The painting you’re asking shabby bowls with the most expen- about is obviously a reference to the sive antique bowls from the imperial story of Babylon in the Bible. I felt like palace, invaluable antique bowls and Babylon’s river is not just on this side of Neolithic period pottery pieces. Even the world. I always remember Byron’s though they’re poor and homeless, they poem, “By the Rivers of Babylon, We have a rich heritage. Sat Down and Wept.” I read that poem in Chinese, and it’s such a beautiful Between 2004 and 2005 you did quite and melancholy lament about histories a few paintings of Chinese immigrants. we share throughout the world. In this one, it’s a refugee who sits by the river. Mainly they’re of two women, Chinese The woman is feeding a little kid some women, who came to America. At that

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). time I was asked to do a project for Sun I saw a photograph of a Chinese Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, woman idling away her time between Idaho. They sent me a lot of literature conferences in a conference hall. She and visual materials. The photographs was a worker, probably serving tea or of one particular woman named Polly something. You can see a bunch of the Bemis caught my attention. As a young teacups on the table, and that’s really adult, she was sold [as a slave] in the a typical image of China in the 1950s, U.S. in the early nineteenth century. with her just daydreaming, waiting to A writer from San Francisco named do her job. The cups are all lined up Ruthanne Lum McCunn wrote a novel in a row waiting for the conference- [about her] called Thousand Pieces goers, and on the wall there were four of Gold, and PBS made a TV movie portraits—Marx, Engels, Lenin, and many years ago. I wasn’t aware of that, Stalin. In China, we make it shorter: though, I just saw her picture. In most Ma-En-Lie-Si-Mao. They were our of the pictures she was an older woman, great leaders. Ironically, we grew up always wearing her apron, in her garden with a bunch of white men we never and with chickens, with a dog, and with really knew, but we read Marx and a horse. She entered the U.S. through Engels’ books and we saw movies about Portland, Oregon, and then ended up Lenin made in the Soviet Union, and in Idaho, and, according to McCunn’s Stalin leading the revolution. We were book, one day she arrived in the small supposed to worship them along with town of Warren and dismounted her Mao Zedong, and their pictures were horse. “Here comes Polly,” somebody all over China, in conference rooms said. So that became her name; nobody and classrooms, all possible public knew her real name. She was less than spaces. The woman there daydream- five feet tall, but pretty strong. She ing reminded me of when I was in the spoke broken English, and cooked for teachers’ college in the Revolutionary miners, including some rough people. Entertainment Department. Besides One day a miner complained about the official painting we were supposed the coffee, and she jumped out with a to do, I had my secret activities, which butcher knife and said, “Who no like involved putting a little painting box my coffee?” and from that time on in my bag and pretending to walk in they all shut up. So I liked this woman the countryside outside the campus. At who stood up for herself, and I did a that time I did at least one landscape series of paintings of her. This picture per day, just to get away from all the is of her sitting in front of her cabin socialist realist assignments, out to the wearing boots and a hat. You can’t tell beauty of light and the colors and the if she’s black or Native American, she’s landscape at different times of the day, just one of the early American pioneers the sky, the earth. So I have a bunch of in the West. I painted it more like an so-called My Secret Freedom landscape abstract painting and added a Chinese paintings. Like the woman worker in traditional butterfly. It’s called Dangling Modern Time, you can be there physi- (fig. 16). I think for immigrants, it’s cally while your mind is somewhere else. probably life that is dangling there. This So I added to the images of the four is one of my favorite paintings. men in the original photograph other images, also white men, but portraits by There is also Modern Time from 2005 Vincent van Gogh, and I tried to match (fig. 17). Could you tell us about Marx’s big beard and Lenin’s skinny face that work? and Stalin’s mustache, and I gave the whole thing a red background, always

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). associated with Red October, the revolu- You mentioned the My Secret Freedom tion. I added three alarm clocks made paintings from your student years. during the Cultural Revolution—they’re How did you manage to make those? revolutionary relics. On the face of these clocks, they have Red Guards with Little Well, those paintings are very small. Red Books. When the clocks’ arms They’re on paper, because as a student I tick, their figures start to move, waving was poor. Also I had to really hide what the books. And if you set an alarm, I was doing because . . . an alarm can go off at a certain time. When I show it, I always set the clocks They were contraband. so they tick almost like a time bomb, and I added a little image and character Well, there was a term the government that Picasso designed for a play called always used, “apolitical,” meaning Parade, a Chinese magician. That’s how you’re not a revolutionary. But not the West (or at least Picasso) thought the being a revolutionary could equate to Chinese might look, as if in a costume. being counterrevolutionary. It’s easy The painting has a lot of interesting to suddenly find yourself on the other dualities, where we are all connected to side, or at least be criticized. So I was history, culture, politics, to time overall. very careful when I was doing those

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 17 Hung Liu, Modern Time, 2005. landscapes. First of all, I had to hide was necessary to survive as an artist in Oil on canvas, lacquered wood, my paint box, which was small. I had Maoist China, to keep a little piece of Cultural Revolution clocks, 66 x 168 in. Photo, courtesy of the to cut my paintbrushes very short to myself. Of course, the finished oil paint- artist fit into the box, and I attached the ings took time to dry, so I put them gessoed paper on a little board in the under my bed, and when they dried I 18 Hung Liu, Tis the Final Conflict, box, getting everything ready, tiny paint put them away and never felt like they 2007. Oil on canvas, 66 x 66 in. Private collection tubes, pretending to be taking a walk. were treasures or anything. I just valued Sometimes the walks could be twenty the practice itself to keep me alive, minutes, sometimes thirty, and in winter reminding me of the importance of the I was all wrapped up in warm clothes personal pleasure of being an artist, why and scarves, to sit in the snow. But that in the first place I wanted to paint or was one of my most memorable times, to draw. They were not about the final enjoyable, because I was alone and result; it was the process that was so quiet, and there was nothing else but lifesaving. me and nature and nobody telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. I just A number of your images around 2007 selected whatever was in front of me to include figures with rifles (fig. 18). Was paint, facing sometimes just a tree, or an there some reason you suddenly became open field, and I started to work. That interested in this theme?

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This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). In college, I went to military camp. I century, I watched it again and I was was a top marksman. We used a semi- rather moved. We were taught to sacri- automatic rifle from World War II. fice ourselves for revolutionary goals and After I painted women, from prostitutes never fear death, so I feel I could have to laborers to immigrants, I felt like been one of those women. I did a whole women were not just vulnerable victims, series called Daughters of China after the only receiving abuse, but some of them movie. I even made a video about it. were also strong and tough. They grab a rifle, join the war. There’s not just a Coming up to the present, you recently band of brothers; there’s a sisterhood had an exhibition at the Rena Bransten of soldiers as well. Every single paint- Gallery in San Francisco, which included ing title [for these] is a line from a a monumental horizontal painting, famous proletarian song, [such as] “The twenty feet long, titled Holy Saturday Internationale.” I found this movie (fig. 19). made in 1949—actually the historic event it describes happened in 1938 in Lately I’ve been working from things I Manchuria—in which eight women have observed firsthand instead of from fought a line of advancing Japanese historic photographs. For example, a soldiers. They covered their Chinese woman who was teaching an anatomy comrades’ retreat. At their backs, class invited me to visit a lab where though, was a river—there was no medical students study cadavers. I escape. Rather than being taken prisoner visited, observing the dead, and took by the Japanese, the women decided to some pictures during my visit. So in a fight to the last minute, so they either sense these paintings still come from had to surrender or drown. In the end, photographs, but the difference now they destroyed all their weapons, carried is that these are my own photographs their wounded comrades, eight of them of dead things that came into my life. holding hands, together walking into For example, my husband and I took the river, where they drowned. This a walk near our house in Oakland and movie, Daughters of China, was made came upon a dead deer hit by a car. It as propaganda just one year after I was was a doe, and I took pictures with my 19 Hung Liu, Holy Saturday, 2010. Oil on canvas, 60 x 240 in. born. The first time I watched it I was phone. Several months later, I came Photo, courtesy of the artist a little kid. But after more than half a upon a dead fawn at almost the same

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spot. But this time, I put it in the trunk You did a collaboration at Magnolia of my car and took it to my studio, Editions with poet Michael McClure photographed it, and then took the based on a deer you found. You’ve also little body to an animal shelter to get worked at other printmaking workshops. cremated. In China, I drew and painted What do you like about printmaking “from life” for so many years, meaning (fig. 20) and its challenges? still life, or from a live model, or live landscapes like the Secret Freedom pic- At your studio, you’re the queen. tures we discussed—meaning I looked You work at your own pace, your at something directly firsthand. So now own rhythm. You’re in charge. When I have had firsthand encounters with all you go to Bud Shark in the Rocky these dead things, except in the context Mountains, Tamarind in Albuquerque, of everyday life. The show that emerged and when I work with Pyramid Atlantic from these works was based on my pho- in Maryland, you have to physically tographs of dead things from life. In one leave your studio. You can’t work alone of my visits to the lab, I photographed because you work with master printers. a cadaver lying there, and it very much Even though I’ve been working with reminded me of Jesus Christ after his some of them for years, I need to refresh Crucifixion, or of some Christian saint my memory each time, relearning what who has sacrificed his life for others. etching, what lithographs, are about. I happened to go to that clinic, the What’s the limitation? But I also try to medical center, on a Saturday, and I was do things I have not done before, includ- asked by my gallery on Good Friday to ing new subject matter and techniques, title the painting that I made. That was and being influenced by the uniqueness when I said, “Between Good Friday and of a new medium. One of the things I Easter, what do you call this Saturday?” like best about working with printers They said, “Holy Saturday.” So that’s the is that I can put myself in a learning how painting was named. position. I can be silly, stupid. I have no

101 American Art

This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). knowledge. All of the master printers very dark with all of this very confus- over the years, they’ve been very patient. ing imagery, like a lost memory. There They’re respectful and they politely is a group of men dancing around a sometimes tell you, “No, it’s impossible drum. Exotic women playing musical to do that.” But sometimes they encour- instruments. Adding to all of this stuff, age me, like to attach a 3D object to the I painted some important images from prints or otherwise go wild. A limitation my career, like going back to China, and is a part of the beauty, how you can be it’s like my green card pending and my creative within certain boundaries while passport image, like maybe a refugee, a still breaking the rules. I cannot erase lot of images, pieces of images from my myself, but I try to use existing imagery existing paintings, and some images of created by me and also try to do it dif- Buddhist hands as well, just randomly ferently, to have another chance. You’re everywhere. This mural is done on ten editing your own things. It’s like being 4-by-8 panels [8 feet in height], so the haunted by your own ghost and then total is nearly forty feet long. So this is figuring out how to reinvent something like the memory of the last building, because you are in a different place. of the last dining hall. And I invited quite a few of the top contemporary Most of your exhibitions have been in artists, including Xu Bing who got a the U.S., but you do exhibit around the MacArthur in the U.S. and Sui Jianguo, world, particularly in China. A recent Liu Xiaodong, Li Songsong, and Yu project in Beijing took place in an Hong, to write something about their imperial granary (fig. 21). own memories of the mural, since they all had been students at CAFA after I That was 2008. I was offered an oppor- left. Personally I felt that this was a very tunity to show at the great granary, the important piece because it made a con- imperial granary. It so happened that nection. In the twenty-four years since in 1981, before I graduated from the I had left China, a whole generation mural program in the Central Academy of artists grew up. Of the people who of Fine Arts, I finished a mural called remember that mural, the youngest are Music of the Great Earth [for the Foreign in their mid-thirties. So it’s not nostalgia Students’ Dining Hall of the academy], about my own mural. It’s about memory, but that property was sold and the which is different from nostalgia building was torn down about 2000 because, like those times, it is broken along with the murals. So although my and mostly gone. original mural was dead, when I had a chance to reinvent it, I felt, since it Do you go to China regularly? had been painted in a dining hall, that the sixteenth-century imperial granary I’ve been back to China regularly since would be a good place to do it. Maybe 1990. My mom lived in Beijing, and I could redo the mural without having visiting her became my semiannual the original mural as a reference. I do event. Later on we started to contact have black-and-white preparatory draw- artists, and Jeff was consulting on con- ings. So I talked to Magnolia master temporary art for the Asian Art Museum printer Don Farnsworth who used the in San Francisco. He was showing drawings, scanned them, and loaded contemporary Chinese artists, so from them in the computer, used Photoshop, the late 90s on every time we went to and double-printed the image. One is China we visited artists, visited their backward. One is right side up. Then we studios, talked to them at length and in made a color print, like a negative. It’s depth, and I was the interpreter. There

102 Summer 2011

This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 21 Hung Liu, Music of the Great was a great connection for me because I’m, again, talking about history as a Earth, 2008, Imperial Granary, as an immigrant in the United States, verb. My status is “becoming American,” Beijing. Ten oil-on-wood panels, grains, antique grain baskets, even though I have a home and studio like all the first-generation immigrants. ink on paper, oil on shaped here, and even though I have a career Becoming American is learning every- canvas, each wood panel: 8 x here, I felt that because I came here as thing new—and then meanwhile I 4 ft.; overall: 8 x 40 ft. Photo, an adult—I was already thirty-six—with sometimes feel I want to go back to courtesy of the artist so-so English, I was constantly learning China, at least emotionally and in spirit. more. Even now, every day there’s a new I realize the difference, though, because I word, like “anthrax.” I’m curious about live here. I miss a lot of details not being this and it constantly keeps me energetic, there. So I catch up when I go back, but but on the other hand I feel I can never also I can never be the same, as though I be a blue-blooded American because had never left China.

103 American Art

This content downloaded from 076.127.009.092 on February 07, 2018 13:22:21 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).