BREAK THROUGH CONTEMPORARY /OMEN ARTISTS BOWDOIN COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART This brochure accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, from September 27 through December 22, 20 13. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the symposium "Female Embodiment of the Visual World: Women's Art in Contemporary China," held at Bowdoin College on September 28, 2013. Design by Wilcox Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright © 20 1 3 Bowdoin College Image opposite: Peng Wei, Autumn of Tang Dynasty, 2008 Back cover: Cao Fei, Deep Breathing (from COSPIayers series), 2004 Bowdoin College Museum of Art 9400 College Station Brunswick, Maine 040118494 20772S-3275 bowdoin edu/art-museum Cai Jin (Tsai Chin) HfS Cao Fei (Tsao Fei) If H Chen Qiulin (Chen Ch'iu-lin) $RfX^ Hung Liu iJ4l LinTianmiao (LinT'ien-miao) $^1s Peng Wei (Peng Wei) Xing Danwen (Hsing Tan-wen) fflS-^X Yin Xiuzhen (Yin Hsiu-chen) 3^"^i# The artists' names appear above in Chinese characters and in two forms of romanization of the Chinese language: pinyin, the current international standard, and Wade-Giles (in parentheses) introduced in the late nineteenth century and used through much of the twentieth century. The names are rendered in pinyin elsewhere in the publication. — Introduction The eight artists featured in Breakthrough; Work by Contemporary historical scholarship. Peggy Wang, assistant professor of art Chinese Women Artists—Cai Jin, Cao Fei, Chen Qiulin, Hung history and Asian studies, considers the field of Chinese Lin, LinTianmiao, Peng Wei, Xing Danwen, and Yin women's art since its emergence in the mid-1990s and Xiuzhen—span multiple generations, ranging from those cautions us about the potential pitfalls of defining a group who came of age during the Cultural Revolution of the of artists by geography or gender. Their joint perspectives 1960s and 1970s to those who grew up amid China's activate our appreciation for this sophisticated and vibrant massive infrastructural reforms and emergence on the work and foster a nuanced understanding of the conditions global market during the 1990s. They work across a wide behind these artists' arrival on the world stage. range of media—painting, photography, video, sculpture, installation, and even interventions in the online realm of Second Life. Diverse as their perspectives are as a group, Acknowledgements each artist is concerned with representations of the body their own and that of others. The corporeal form inhabits The initiator and co-curator of this exhibition, Shu-chin the liminal spaces of rapidly changing built environments Tsui, has been conducting original research over the past (Xing Danwen, Chen Qiulin) or may be implied through several years in China on the subject of contemporary clothing or sewing (Yin Xiuzhen, LinTianmiao). Bodies are women's art. Her deep knowledge, enthusiasm, and personal constructed anew as futuristic, virtual avatars (Cao Fei). connections with many of the artists were critical to the Figures from historical photographs appear like ghostly exhibition's success. Breakthrough was also strengthened specters (Hung Liu) . The torsos of female mannequins are immensely thanks to co-curator Peggy Wang's expertise in canvases for ink wash painting (Peng Wei) and the body's the field of contemporary Chinese art. Student assistant to ' interior is suggested through visceral, abstract painting (Cai the curator Hongbei Li 1 4 was instrumental to all facets of Jin). By summoning the figural presence in their art, these the exhibition process. Special thanks are also extended to artists may also be registering, perhaps inadvertently, a Museum Co-Directors Anne and Frank Goodyear, as well as growing awareness of their impact on the contemporary arts Museum staff, especially Suzanne Bergeron, Martina Duncan scene, both within China and internationally. To visualize the '97, Jo Hluska, Laura Latman, Michelle Henning, Joachim human form becomes an assertion of the self, a way to Homann, Jose Ribas '76, and Andrea Rosen. establish one's position amid the tectonic shifts in Chinese We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Becker society in recent decades. Fund for die Bowdoin College Museum of Art, James and In her text Shu-chin Tsui, associate professor of Asian Winnie Chan P '97, Stevens L. Frost Endowment Fund, Lowell studies and film studies, discusses the works on view in Innes Fund, Karl R. PhilbrickArt Museum Fund, Katharine J. terms of their formal qualities and in relation to artistic, Watson Fund, and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. cultural, and societal transformations within China and internationally. In spite of their artistic accomplishments, Sarah Montross Chinese women have historically been absent from art Andrew W Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow 2 I 3 BREAKTHROUGH: ARTISTS AND WORKS SHU-CHIN TSUI Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Film Studies, Bowdoin College Breakthrouah: Work by Contemporary Chinese Women Artists explores traditional to modern and history to re-presentations of the conceptual claims and creative practices of "women's the past. Next is a contrast between ruined sites and urban art" in contemporary China. "Women's art" as a gendered construction, addressing how China's socioeconomic category is open to question, however. How, for example, transition is dramatically changing its landscape. The are we to view works by women artists in terms of exhibition then leads us on a journey through cyberspace, gender politics as well as aesthetic articulations? Why where personal desires find expression through avatars, have Chinese women artists refused to have their work and the social environment becomes virtual reality. Finally, identified in terms of feminism, even if they seemingly an engagement between the search for female identity engage in feminist art practices? Addressing these and experiments with cotton threading, shoemaking, questions and locating them against China's social-cultural and flower painting demonstrate the visual languages of conditions, the exhibition explores four key aspects of the materiality. Through these interwoven themes. Breakthrough work on view. First is a visual dialogue between classical brings fresh critical attention to eight artists who are painting and contemporary innovation, which connects making significant contributions to contemporary art. Between the Classical and the Contemporary Peng Wei and Hung Liu Peng Wei brings a contemporary interpretation to classical Hung Liu's paintings juxtapose past and present in terms Chinese landscape painting. The hanging scroll A Young Girl's of history and memory. In Relic 8 (2004), an image of two Thoughts (2012) features a restrained farewell scene of a nineteenth-century courtesans, quoted from a historical young woman in a boat departing from her lover. The photograph, occupies the canvas. The central panel, red artist has inverted the gender roles present in classical art, and resin-glazed, features Chinese characters composed where usually a passive female figure watches her male with a female radical and phonetic ideogram to signify lover sail away. Additionally the artist turns to Western the gender identity and social status of the subjects. The literature rather than Chinese narrative for an inscription, oil washes and drips of color are Hung Liu's signature rendering in calligraphy a poem by Friedrich Schiller, thus painting style. Circles, symbols of the universe, decorate creating a contrasting dialogue between the conventions the canvas in several hues. The inserted birds, flowers, of subdued Chinese painting and expressive German and grasshopper—iconography from historical Chinese poetry. In the sculptures Night (2010) and Autumn of Tang painting—relate the figures back to traditional art forms. Dynasty (2008), Peng Wei's formal explorations extend the In The Path (2010-201 1), Hung Liu uses her conversation between the classical and the contemporary. characteristic layering of brushstrokes, drips, and patterns She wraps the torsos of commercial female mannequins to create images that blend historical documents with with hemp paper and then inscribes classical ink paintings memory and fantasy. The central image, lifted from a mid- across the body's surface. This innovation transforms two- twentieth-century black-and-white photograph, 1 shows dimensional painting into three-dimensional sculpture, two women riding donkeys along a rural path—the first where the female form assumes material as well as rider smiling as she breastfeeds her baby. Hung Liu embeds gendered significance. the riders within a complex field of imagery—birds, deer, Whereas Peng Wei's sculptures reframe the classical a fish—more references from classical art and symbols of and the contemporary in terms of form and material, good fortune offered to the travelers on their journey. Hung Liu, The Path, 2010-2011 U I 5 Between Ruins and Urban Fiction Chen Qiulin and Xing Danwen Sites of industrial ruins and brick balconies are primary motifs in Chen Qiulin's diverse multimedia work that visualizes the transformations of time and place caused by China's rapid urbanization. In the video Peach Blossom (2009) and related photography, the artist—wearing elaborate make-up and a wedding dress—appears (dis)located when seen against the industrial ruins or the rubble of demolition in her hometown in Wan County, Sichuan Province. A woman's beauty contrasts with the decaying landscape as the artist bears witness to the tumultuous evolution of urban