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RECLAIMING FEMALE AGENCY FEMINIST ART HISTORY AFTER POSTMODERNISM Edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON 22 CULTURAL COLLISIONS Identity and History in the Work o f Hung Liu Allison Arieff DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE, Hung Liu’s paintings ad images she appropriates, while at the same time re dress such diverse and complex issues as footbinding belling against stringent academic rendering. Forced and Western art-historical tradition. The tension in to paint in a Social Realist style in China, she now ea herent in her conflicted personal identity as a Chinese- gerly embraces the techniques of collage, installation, born woman artist living in the West informs her art. and assemblage. Liu also mocks traditional Western Liu’s images of women form a cultural critique, si portrayals of women by referencing the iconography multaneously referring to and challenging artistic and using the titles of canonical artworks such as her and social traditions of East and West. In basing her Mona Lisa I, Madonna, and La Grande Odalisque. subject matter on Western-influenced photographs of Liu’s paintings can perhaps best be read as alle turn-of-the-century Chinese prostitutes, Liu further gories, given their metatextuality: one text is read objectifies representations of women as a basis for through another. She does not invent her imagery but criticizing both the way "we” (Westerners) view Chi rather confiscates or appropriates it from other nese culture and the way Chinese culture has looked sources. At times she may even project the photo at women. She assumes the diflicult task of critiquing graphic image onto the canvas and paint from there. China’s oppressive patriarchal system, alerting her In her hands, then, the image becomes something audience to past transgressions in the hope that other than it was originally intended to be. Liu’s ma knowledge and awareness may serve as an impetus for nipulation of the original images lessens their intent change. and authoritative claim to meaning. By generating Political content notwithstanding, the artist’s images through the reproduction of found photo work, as Lisa Corrin points out, “cannot be reduced graphs, Liu alters their significance. The women in to the cliche of an artist longing for democracy.”' her paintings can be viewed as more than objects for Liu’s paintingstyle both reflects and subverts her tra the male gaze. Her representation of prostitutes and ditional art training. Her canvases are deliberately concubines and, more recently, Qing Dynasty court flattened and distorted, simulating the photographic figures, allows for new ways of seeing. This essay was first published in Woman If A n Journal 17, no. i (Spring—Summer 1996): 35—40. Copyright © 1996 Allison Arieff. Reprinted by permission of the author and Woman Ir A n Journal. Figure 22.1. Hung Liu, Virgin/Vessel, 1990. Oil on canvas. Courtesy Bernice Stembaum Gallery, Miami, Florida. 435 Liu, writes Moira Roth, has “developed more dent and was thus periodically subjected to reeduca fully and consciously her presentation of the interplay tion programs aimed at eradicating politically un of gazes: European and Chinese, male and female, popular ideas. She never stopped thinking about art, past and present, artist’s and viewer’s.”^ The strug though. She made the best of her circumstances, be gle between opposing elements is continual. The friending peasants who realized that she and other artist explains, “Sometimes I feel more labeled than girls had been sent to the fields as punishment not for embraced,. labeled . as a minority artist,. an bad behavior but simply for being from the city. Iron artist of color, a woman artist (feminist?). I am ically, her forced peasant status worked to her ad an artist from China and in China the terms by which vantage. In 1972, toward the end of the Cultural I am defined here make little sense.”^ She compares Revolution, she was able to enter the Revolutionary the process of her work to an excavation where there Entertainment Department at Beijing Teachers Col are so many layers that she is still trying to understand lege under a policy that provided education to the and analyze them all. Liu’s move to the United States working class. and the shift in her work from Socialist Realism to So As an art student at college, Liu had no creative cial Realism resulted in what she describes as “a cri freedom. Under Communist rule, art was not about sis of cultural collision.” Perhaps out of necessity, individual expression or inspiration. The true purpose Liu’s is an art of subversion. She is attempting to in of art, according to Mao Tse-tung, was to serve the vent for herself a way to practice as a Chinese artist masses. The “rich legacy and the good traditions” outside of Chinese culture. The shift from her clas from China’s past were to be reappropriated for the sical training in Chinese art to contemporary West people and transformed into something revolution ern art practice has in effect become the subject of her ary. Art has an assigned position in Communist Party work. She challenges and reinterprets existing social politics. Cultural and artistic policy is still set by the and cultural conventions so as to forge her own per Department of Propaganda. All art publicly exhib sonal and artistic identity. ited or reproduced is required to meet current art pol Hung Liu was born in the city of Chang Chung icy standards. “When I was in China,” Liu explains, in northeastern China in 1948. Her father, a military “artists were expected to be the tools of propaganda. officer in the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek, Abstract and individualistic paintings are not accept was captured and jailed by the Communists when she able in schools or for public exhibition.”"* was only six months old. Liu’s mother was forced to But Liu drew secretly using a small hidden paint divorce her husband, who had fought on the “wrong box. She was subsequently criticized for paying too side” and was considered the enemy. Liu, an only much attention to art and not enough to politics. Her child, met her father for the first time in 1994. Her first job upon graduation was teaching art at an ex mother still lives in China. Liu received most of her perimental school where her young students were in education in Beijing. In 1966, when she was just structed how to paint the red flag of Communism. She eighteen and looking forward to college, the Culmral wanted to continue her education, but only classes re Revolution began. For years the schools were closed. lated to the revolution were offered. She studied Considered an intellectual because of her high school books on Western and Chinese art history and criti education, Liu was sent to a military farm in the coun cism on her own, eventually making her eligible to at tryside for reeducation. There, with other “intellec tend the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. tuals,” a diverse group that ran the gamut from ac Once at the academy, Liu wanted to study mural tors to junior high school students, she was forced to painting. Because of its roots in Buddhist and Taoist work in rice, corn, and wheat fields and to take care traditions, mural painting seemed at first to allow for of horses as a means of ridding her of elitist thought. some measure of artistic freedom and individual style. Later, as an artist she was perceived as too indepen However, the muralists, too, came to be considered a 436 ALLISON ARIEFF threat to the officially entrenched styles of Socialist “Chinese artist who never showed up.” Arriving at Realism and Chinese ink painting, and were forced last in the United States in 1984, she found the tran to produce propaganda.^ “Everybody hated politics sition somewhat eased because she had learned some because it meant we had to obey everything the gov English in elementary school. But once given the ernment, the party said. We tried to get as far away freedom of expression she had so wished for, Liu from politics as we could,” Liu indicates.'^ Although realized she did not really know what she wanted to pressured to glorify party leadership, she instead pro do with it. She continued doing what she knew best— duced a mural celebrating Chinese music— a little murals— and waited to see how her work would personal rebellion against authority that would come evolve.® Liu credits her advisor, artist and critic Al to characterize her later work. The mural still stands lan Kaprow, for changing the way she thought about at the Central Academy. Unhappy with the People’s and approached art. Republic of China’s requirements for art— that it be Liu’s first major work in the United States was a completely politicized, its messages blatantly obvious mural and site-specific installation at the Capp Street and propagandizing, and anonymous^— Liu applied Project art gallery in San Francisco. This 1988 work and was accepted to graduate school at the Univer was a turning point for the artist. She had become in sity of California, San Diego, in 1981. terested in historical photographs of Chinese immi It took nearly four years for Liu to get a passport grants in San Francisco’s Chinatown and wanted to and permission to leave. It was difficult for her Chi relate their experiences to her own. One result was nese friends to understand why she would want to Resident Alien (1988; fig. 22.2), a self-portrait con go to the United States, since Western art was "de structed around a green card belonging to the immi generate.” But she persisted, saying that she just grant “Fortune Cookie” (alias Hung Liu).

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