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Cultural Collisions: Identity and History in the Work of Hung Liu Author(syf Allison Arieff Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1996yf S S 0 Published by: Woman's Art Inc.

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. Woman's Art Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Woman's Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CULTURAL COLLISIONS Identity and History in the Work of Hung Liu By Allison Arieff D eceptively simple, Hung Liu's recent paintings address such diverse and complex issues as footbinding and Western art-historical tradition. The tension inherent in her conflicted personal identity as a Chinese-born woman artist living in the West informs her art. Liu's images of women form a cultural critique, simultaneously referring to and challenging artistic and social traditions of East and West. In basing her sub- ject matter on Western-influenced photographs of turn-of-the- century Chinese prostitutes, Liu further objectifies representa- tions of women as a basis for criticizing both the way "we" (West- erners) view Chinese culture and the way that Chinese culture has looked at women. She assumes the difficult task of critiquing China's oppressive patriarchal system, alerting her audience to past transgressions in the hope that knowledge and awareness may serve as an impetus for change. Political content notwithstanding, the artist's work, as Lisa Cor- rin points out, "cannot be reduced to the cliche of an artist longing for democracy."' Liu's painting style both reflects and subverts her traditional art training. Her canvases are deliberately flattened and distorted, simulating the photographic images she appropriates while at the same time rebelling against stringent academic ren- dering. Forced to paint in a Socialist Realist style in China, she now eagerly embraces the techniques of collage, installation, and assemblage. Liu also mocks traditional Western portrayals of women by referencing the iconography and using the titles of canonical artworks such as her Mona Lisa I, Madonna, and La Grande Odalisque. Liu's paintings can perhaps best be read as allegories, given their metatextuality-one text is read through another. She does not invent her imagery but confiscates or appropriates it from oth- er sources. At times she may even project the photographic image onto the canvas and paint from there. In her hands then, the im- age becomes something other than it was originally intended to be. Liu's manipulation of the original images lessens their intent and authoritative claim to meaning. By generating images through the reproduction of found photographs, Liu alters their signifi- cance. The women in her paintings can be viewed as more than objects for the male gaze. Her representation of prostitutes and concubines and, most recently, Qing Dynasty court figures, allows for new ways of seeing. Liu, writes Moira Roth, has "developed more fully and con- sciously her presentation of the interplay of gazes: European and Chinese, male and female, past and present, artist's and viewer's."2 The struggle between opposing elements is continual. The artist explains, "sometimes I feel more labeled than embraced...la- beled...as a minority artist...an artist of color, a woman artist (feminist?)...I am an artist from China and in China the terms by which I am defined here make little sense."3 She likens the process of her artwork to an excavation where there are so many layers that she is still trying to understand and analyze them all. Liu's move to the United States and the shift in her work from Socialist Realism to Social Realism resulted in what she describes as "a cri- sis of cultural collision." Perhaps out of necessity, Liu's is an art of subversion. She is attempting to invent for herself a way to prac- tice as a Chinese artist outside of Chinese culture. The shift from her classical training in Chinese art to contemporary Western art practice has in effect become the subject of her work. She chal- lenges and reinterprets existing social and cultural conventions so as to forge her own personal and artistic identity. Hung Liu was born in northeast China in the city of Chang Chung in 1948. Her father, a military officer in the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek, was captured and jailed by the Commu- nists when she was only six months old. Liu's mother was forced to divorce her husband, who had fought on the "wrong side" and was considered the enemy. Liu, an only child, met her father for the first time in 1994. Her mother still lives in China. Liu received most of her education in Beijing. In 1966, when she was just 18 and looking forward to college, the Cultural Revolution occurred. For years the schools were closed. Considered an intellectual, giv- en her high school education, Liu was sent to a military farm in the countryside for reeducation. There, with other "intellectuals," a diverse group that ran the gamut from actors to junior high school students, she was forced to work in the rice, corn, and wheat fields and to take care of the horses as a means of ridding her of elitist thought. Later, as an artist, she was perceived as too independent and was thus periodically subjected to reeducation programs aimed at eradicating politically unpopular ideas. She never stopped thinking about art, though. She made the best of her circumstances, befriending peasants who realized that she and other girls had been sent to the fields as punishment, not for bad behavior but simply for being from the city. Ironically, her forced peasant status worked to her advantage: Toward the end of the revolution, under a policy to provide education to the working class, she was able to enter the Revolutionary Entertainment De- partment at Beijing's Teachers College in 1972. As an art student at college, Liu had no creative freedom. Un- der Communist rule, art was not about individual expression or in- spiration. The true purpose of art, Mao Tse-tong believed, was to serve the masses. The "rich legacy and the good traditions" from China's past were to be reappropriated for the people and trans- formed into something revolutionary. Art had a definite and as- signed position in Communist Party politics. Cultural and artistic policy is still set by the Department of Propaganda. All art publicly exhibited or reproduced is required to meet current art policy standards. "When I was in China," Liu explains, "artists were ex- pected to be the tools of propaganda. Abstract and individualistic paintings are not acceptable in schools or for public exhibition."4 But Liu drew secretly with a small, hidden paint box. She was subsequently criticized for paying too much attention to art and not enough to politics. Her first job upon graduation was teaching art at an experimental school where the young students were in- structed how to paint the red flag of Communism. She wanted to SPRING / SUMMER 1996 This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions continue her education but on- R E S I E ly classes related to the revolu- _ . .~i E [ tion were offered. On her own, she studied books on WVestern ( and Chinese art history and criticism, making her eligible, eventually, to attend the Cen- tral Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. A ~ L Once at the academy, Liu wanted to study mural painting. Because of its roots in Buddhist .' a and Taoist traditions, mural painting seemed at first to allow for some measure of artistic freedom and individual style. However, the muralists, too, Fig. 1. Hung Liu, Resident Alier came to be considered a threat Courtesy of Steinbaum Krauss Ga to the officially entrenched styles of Socialist Realism and Chinese ink painting, and were forced to produce propaganda.5 "Everybody hated politics because it meant we had to obey everything the government, the party, said. We tried to get as far away from politics as we could,"" Liu explains. Although pressured to glorify party leadership, she in- stead produced a mural celebrating Chinese music-a little per- sonal rebellion against authority that characterizes her later work. The mural still stands at the Central Academy. Unhappy with the People's Republic of China's requirements for art-that it be completely politicized, its messages blatantly obvious and propa- gandizing, and anonymous,' Liu applied and was accepted to grad- uate school at the University of California, San Diego, in 1981. It took nearly four years for Liu to get a passport and permission to leave. It was difficult for her Chinese friends to understand why she would want to go to the United States, since Western art was "degenerate." But she persisted, saying that she just wanted an op- portunity to look and learn. Meanwhile, the university wait- ed for the "Chinese artist who never showed up." Arriving fi- nally in the United States in 1984, she found the transition somewhat eased because she - had learned some English in el- ementary school. But once giv- en the freedom of expression she had so wished for, Liu real- ized she did not really know ex- actly what she wanted to do with it. She continued doing what she knew best-murals- and waited to see how her work would evolve.' Liu credits her , advisor, artist and critic Allan Kaprow, for changing the way she thought about and ap- proached art. f Liu's first major work in the United States was a mural and site-specific installation at the . ... i ' Capp Street Project art gallery in San Francisco. This 1988 Fig. 2. Hung Liu, Half of the Sky (1991 work was a turning point for the 60" x 60" x 12". Courtesy Ren artist. She had begun to exam- Photo: Jac( 0 N T A L I E N ine historical photographs of . _._._._......_ Chinese immigrants in San Francisco's Chinatown and wanted to relate their experi- ences to her own. One result .1 . ,was Resident Alien (Fig. 1), es- i { a sentially a self-portrait con- *-, v AS ... . ' structed around a U.S. Depart- *1 _, 7 3 q ment of Justice Immigration : .....r ' .: _, and Naturalization Service L/ ,l (green) card belonging to the L j '; , t immigrant "Fortune Cookie" s >^ * I ~ (alias Hung Liu). Text accom- ,-f-it ' X ,. panying the piece reads: "Five /o>~ ~' ^thousand year-old culture on my back. Late twentieth centu- n (1988), oil on canvas, 60" x 90". rv world in my face..." The Ilery, New York. Photo: Ben Blackwell. themes and styles she explored in this work, which combined the traditional medium of painting with the display of objects to create complete environments, were continued through the early nineties. Although this juxtaposition of elements is common to much Postmodern art, in Liu's work it resonates with her personal conflicts of identity. In Resident Alien, the image on the green card reappropriates her own identification card photo, and her ironic use of the name "Fortune Cookie" is sexually connotative and signifies Western manipulations of Chinese culture. Liu views the fortune cookie as an apt symbol of her status because "it is a hybrid-it exists between cultures...it's not Chinese and it's not American."" (The fortune cookies reappear later, piled atop rail- road tracks, in her 1994 mixed-media installation Jiu Jin Slhan: Old Gold Mouintain at the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum.) Residentt Alien also signals the beginning of the incorporation of photography in her art. Working from photographs rather than live models was discouraged in China, and Liu views her use of photography as artistic defi- ance, a rebellion against the academy and her education. Liu's primary source of imagery comes from books of photo- graphs. One such book, The Face of China, published in the United States, features images taken by foreign tourists in Chi- na between 1860 and 1912. Two other books she found in China when she returned to xis- it in 1991 contain images of fa- mous prostitutes, a kind of cata- logue of availability; they amaz- ingly had survived the Cultural Revolution book burnings. She mines the old photographs for information and insight. "I put them through rituals. I see it al- most like research or some kind of scientific observation. I mnove from square inch to square inch. I find out a lot of things."'" i61 -Liu returned again to China in ), oil on canvas, lacquered wood, ceramic, the sumtmer of 1993, discover- la Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. ing more pictures, some from ques Cressaty. magazines dating from the WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL I I I I q I i I n :1 This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions twenties, thirties, and forties. Her 1995 exhibition, "The Last Dynasty," at the Stein- baum Krauss Gallery, featured imagery culled from historic photographs documenting members of the Qing Dynasty Court (1644-1911). :j ! 1 Liu's found images of Chi- na are reprocessed with con- temporary \Vestern materials and modes of display but at the same time refer to tradi- tional Chinese artmaking processes such as copying as an act of homage. Her simu- Fig. 3. Hung Liu, La Grande Odalisqu lation of photography allows antique architectural pieces, the works to preserve their Eric and Barbara Dobkin Collection. Ph documentary status even when they are being interpreted formally. Where the paintings of the early nineties were often quite finished, truer to their photo- graphic source, more recent pieces give increasing primacy to the painterly gesture. "Saturated with oil and mediums, my paintings sort of perform themselves," she explains. "They drip, they stain, and wash the images in a way that opens them to time, the literal time of gravity pulling oil to the bottom edge of the canvas."" Liu seeks to amplify "the historical moment, bringing it into fo- cus, exposing its...humanness" to insure that the viewer under- T j -'l "- stands that these images reflect I :~ reality.12 She feels that her im- . ages of 19th- and 20th-century . Chinese women reveal the suf- : i' ferings of these women through centuries of spiritual and physi- cal oppression. Her desire is to expose the generations-old wounds of her mother, grand- mother, and great-grandmother. *. "Although I do not have bound feet, the invisible spiritual bur- dens fall heavy on me," she ex- ' < plains. "I communicate with the i characters in my paintings, pros- t titutes-these completely subju- ' ; i' t ! t ^" gated people-with reverence, sympathy and awe. They had no r real names. Probably no chil- dren. I want to make up stories ' ' * for them. Who were they? Did J they leave any trace in history?"'3 ' Liu's desire is to give these women their place in history. Her paintings expose the pain of the traditional roles women f i were assigned, regardless of J i ^ their status, according to the "three obediences" of Confu- cianism-to father, to husband, and to son. Before Communism, Confucianism had provided the model for proper family life. It Fig. 4. Hung Liu, Cherry Lips prescribed a patriarchal, patrilin- Nancy and Peter Gennet ( je (1 mixe hoto:

(199 Colle SPRING / SUMMER 1996 ._92),~ o n q o.eal, and patrilocal family sys- tem. The roles, privileges, duties, and responsibilities of the individual were dictated by sex, age, and generation. cilia itef,Aa n Confucianism officially sanc- tioned the dominance of men over women and old over young. Individual identity was virtually a non-issue- one's needs were subordinat- ed to those of the family __: argroup.l' Females suffered greatly under this system- often they were not even 992), oil on canvas, lacquered wood, named. Their lack of autono- .d media, 521/2" x 95" x 8". my and their exclusion from Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York. public life was considered es- sential for the preservation of civilization itself.' An ancient ode confirms this: "The wise man founded the city; But the wise woman destroys it...Disaster does not descend from Heaven; It comes from WN'oman."'" Conditions were supposed to change under Communism. Al- though Mao once commented that "Women can hold up half the sky," women were granted little power or autonomy under the Communist regime. In Half of the Sky (1991; Fig. 2), Liu re- sponds with irony to the contradiction between what is said and what is actually meant. The nf ~S I Manchu woman, who appears / :!: . 4' to be a concubine, has bound i: .: feet and long fingernails and is J :: . : garishly made-up. Her formal attire immobilizes her-she ap- t ";./";.! pears unable to rise from her ';l, ;~, : chair. The servant girl to her left L symbolizes the woman's wealth -i and status. Regardless of her so- cia l standing, she possesses no power or autonomy. She is as :iSjl elaborately decorated and oh- jectified as the vase to her left. A ? The work's monochromatic ren- ' / dering in tones of blue adds to its status as a historical docu- ment. The blue is cold and dis- f * ?$~ j tant, echoing the icy stare on the woman's face. Nowhere was women's sub- i! jugation more explicitly ex- ?, pressed than the practice of footbinding. Popularized in the Sung Dynasty (960-1279), foot- binding is chilling in its associa- tions of manipulation and con- .-?- .~r. aMfinement. Liu views bound feet as a vivid metaphor for both the shaping of women as objects of male desire and the distortion of the larger society through various forms of domination. Disturbing as the practice '5), oil on canvas, 84" x 60". now seems, for centuries foot- ,ction. Photo: Adam Reich. binding was easily justified. Ini- 0 A r This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tially, its appeal was purely aesthetic. Courtesans and wealthy women had bound feet; women who worked did not-it was a marker of class, a symbol of conspicuous leisure. But as the treat- ment of women became increasingly oppressive, footbinding was tied to a wide range of behavioral expectations. It was an indicator of good breeding and became necessary for obtaining suitable marriage proposals.'7 Men were thus guaranteed subservient sex objects, while women were left with a pair of three inch stumps that caused lifelong pain and made even the simple act of walking excruciating. Footbinding transformed woman into a fetish and thus a pure object of love. Liu's paintings of prostitutes or concubines with startlingly tiny feet (termed "golden lilies" or "lotus petals") posing for clients document this phenomenon. Freud saw the custom of footbinding as a symbolic castration of women, a claim which, ac- cording to French philosopher Julia Kristeva, Chinese civilization was unique in admitting."8 Kristeva takes this idea further, explain- ing that "if by castration we understand the necessity for some- thing to be excluded so that a socio-symbolic order may be built- the cutting off of one part of the whole, so that the whole as such may be constituted as an alliance of homogeneous parts-it is in- teresting to note that for Chinese civilization, this superfluous quantity was found in women."19 The various oppressive practices directed at the female population-female infanticide, filial piety, chaste widowhood, namelessness, lack of educational opportuni- ties-sustained China's long-established male hierarchical system. Most of the women Liu depicts have bound feet. But in God- dess of Love, Goddess of Liberty (1989), she takes an especially re- bellious swing at her country's authoritarianism by showing a woman with her bound feet exposed. The painting juxtaposes a Ming vase decorated with a nude couple making love on the left, with a seated woman, solitary and complacent, as if resigned to her fate, on the right. The vivid red of the background is the color of fertility and of happiness in traditional China but also the symbolic color of Communism. The vase (or vessel) is a recurrent form in Liu's work and is either incorporated in painted form or as an ac- tual object placed near the canvas. For her, the vases/vessels "sym- bolize the fact that women, especially prostitutes, were treated as mere decorations, inhuman objects, beautifully made up, but empty and useless, placed passively in the corner of the room." These containers are often empty, in keeping with the ancient Chinese proverb "to be empty of knowledge is a female virtue." The objects that hang on the wall to the right of the canvas further affirm the position of women in China. A child's chalkboard is blank-a symbol of the blank slate of female education. The small broom beneath it represents women's work but can also be read as "a symbolic tool used to sweep away disorder and memory"20 A fig- ure with a broom was a traditional Chinese character for wife.21 The woman is depicted in monochromatic sepia tones, again en- hancing the historicity of the work. Clearly something about this woman resonated for Liu. Her image appears in Virgin/Vessel (1990; cover), chest emblazoned with a symbolically charged scar- let square. Set within the square is a blue vase painted with an erotic scene. The woman is featured yet again in Bonsai (1992), juxtaposed against Liu's re-creation of an ancient Chinese medical illustration. The woman's mangled feet carry the most profound message here. Never revealed, the bound foot was considered the most erotic part of the body. A special stocking was worn at all times- even during intercourse-to cover it. Chinese artists might have depicted female genitalia but never a naked, crippled foot.22 Liu subverts this false sense of propriety by metaphorically unwrap- ping the bandages. In exposing the feet, she exposes the woman's 0 pain. Liu's paintings are didactic in their efforts to inform the viewer of the roles and representations of women in Chinese his- tory. "I'm glad I didn't have to bind my feet," she explains, "but in- equality is still there." Some viewers do not appreciate Liu's ef- forts. An elderly Chinese man stormed out of a recent exhibition in San Francisco after inquiring at the front desk why Liu had ex- posed only the ugly aspects of old China and not its tradition of beautiful landscape and flower paintings. Liu was not surprised by this reaction. "I don't expect the gentlemen of our traditionally pa- triarchal society, who are so used to treating women as inferiors, to be happy to see the pain that (was) caused those women."23 With their references to European art-historical tradition, Liu's paintings also form a critique of the way women are represented in Western culture. Some titles, and the passive, reclining poses she uses, play on masterpieces like Leonardo's Mona Lisa, Ingres's Grande Odalisque, and Manet's Olympia. Such depictions of pas- sive women are not part of Chinese tradition. Although women are often idealized, they usually are engaged in some activity- palace style beauties swatting butterflies or enthusiastic party members working in the field. The image of the woman in La Grande Odalisque (1992; Fig. 3) is taken from the book The Face of China. Liu makes the photo- graph her own by her use of color, objects, and the gestural paint drips at the bottom of the canvas. She presents here an elaborate stage set, adding an element of theatricality to the work. The can- vas rests on a painted platform with generic "Oriental" vases filled with gilt flowers at either end and a long-stemmed gilded calla lily placed in front. The inanimate objects contrast with the sexually animated woman. But parallels can be drawn between the two as well. Both the woman and the objects are viewed as possessions; both are used for decorative and utilitarian purposes. "These kinds of flowers don't have a life," Liu explains, "they're so highly pol- ished and decorative, but cold and detached."24 The same could be said for the young woman in the photograph. In Chinese culture, flowers are associated with women and beauty. Ellen Johnston Laing has described, for example, how butterflies (associated with males) landing on flowers became a way of choosing sexual part- ners during the traditional Flower Morning Festival.25 Flowers symbolize fertility and sexuality and often represent female geni- talia. Prostitutes were frequently assigned "flower" names such as White Orchid or Sweet Lily. Most importantly, every element in this work-the vases, the flowers, and the woman-is put on dis- play. Liu's Olympia (1992) is similar to Odalisque with its reclining subject and floral display. It makes reference, of course, to Manet's scandalous study of Victorine Meurent, whose confrontational gaze caused an uproar in the staid French Salon. At first glance Liu's passive images seem to cater to the male gaze, as did the paintings and photographs on which they are based. The confrontational expressions of her subjects, however, subvert that gaze as does the fact that these works have been painted by a woman. Witness the confrontational sexuality of the 1995 painting, Cherry Lips (Fig. 4). "The women look directly at the camera, which means that when I look at them they look back at me," Liu explains. "A man put them there on a couch, a chair, with the intention to sell them as products. The women had no control," she adds. "But now that man is gone yet the imagery of these women is left. It has survived through time and space, even a revolution. When I felt the women looking at me, somehow I just wanted to empower them."26 In re-appropriating or "taking" these images from the patriarchal gaze, Liu gives something back to the passive women who have been objectified throughout histo- ry. She catalogues past transgressions in an effort to avoid their re- currence. WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Liu's work attempts to mount "a sustained and far-reaching po- litical critique of contemporary representational systems which have had an overdetermined effect in the social production of sex- ual difference" as espoused by art historian Griselda Pollock. Ways must be discovered to address women as subjects rather than as objects of male desire, fantasy, and hatred.27 Sexual divisions have resulted from the construction of sexual difference as a socially significant axis of meaning. Pollock explains that these construc- tions are constantly enforced by representations created in the ideological practices we call culture. Pictures, photographs, films, and so forth are addressed to us, the viewer, in an attempt to win our identification with the represented versions of masculinity and femininity.28 These representations perpetuate existing roles. The need therefore is to deconstruct those roles and create new repre- sentations of gender and identity. I believe that Liu's work takes positive steps toward that goal. A symposium titled "(re) Orienting: Self Representations of Asian American Women Through the Visual Arts," held in New York City in 1991, raised the issue that for Asian women in a pre- dominantly white society, it was race, not gender, that often was seen as the primary area of conflict and concern. Panel members commented that the objectification of Asian women, not just by gender but even more significantly by race, highlights the need for a feminist and multicultural agenda more sensitive to the needs of various groups.29 Liu has of course experienced this dilemma first hand. In Women of Color (1991), she interprets the politically cor- rect cliche literally. Three bust-length images of Asian women, one red, one yellow, and one blue, are placed friezelike on the canvas. A shelf holding three vessels in the corresponding colors is installed below the painting. Color here becomes an arbitrary, meaningless distinction. Approaching such a volatile issue with hu- mor challenges the viewer to consider the issue of multicultural- ism as more than skin deep. Just as Liu's paintings examine how the concept of femininity is socially constructed, they also explore how the West has construct- ed "the Orient." Edward Said explains that the outsider's knowl- edge of the Orient consists merely of that outsider's representa- tion of it. The Orient has been presented in binary opposition to the Occident and has provided the most recurring images of the "other." The relationship between the two cultures, like the rela- tionship between men and women, has been one of power, of domination, and of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.30 By positing the Orient as "different" and therefore culturally inferior, the West assumed a sense of authority over it. "The Orient," Said writes, "was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences."31 Numerous European artists, among them Jean-Leon Gerome, Eu- gene Delacroix, Ingres, and Manet invented their own versions of an exotic Orient. Linda Nochlin has suggested that for Western artists, the Orient existed either "as an actual place to be mystified with effects of realness" or as "a project of the imagination, a fan- tasy space or screen onto which strong desires-erotic, sadistic, or both-could be projected with impunity." The function of such representations was to assure the viewer that the "Orientals" de- picted were "irredeemably different from, more backward than, and culturally inferior to those who constructed and consumed the product."32 Liu's found photographs further reveal this fascination with the exoticism and difference of "the Orient." Depicted in the images are scenes of torture or field labor, veiled brides or rigidly posed aging dowagers. Everyday life is selectively filtered to distance East from West, voiding shared viewpoints. Present are images of SPRING / SUMMER 1996 "bad women" (the title of one of Liu's exhibitions)-prostitutes or courtesans who also serve to reinforce the moral superiority of the Western photographer. Images of Asian women have long occu- pied a place in Western imagination, be they "exotic" sex object, Dragon Lady, or today's submissive mail order bride. Liu and oth- er Asian American women have been attempting to respond to these stereotypical representations by finding alternate ways to "name" themselves in a culture unable to encompass the complex- ity of their experience.3 Liu's images do not always succeed on a visual and emotional level. At times the work can be too didactic, weighted down per- haps by her anger and the sheer volume of information the viewer needs to process. At times her message may be imperceptible, es- pecially to those who know nothing of the artist's history. Her use of various mediums and modes of display are at times too referen- tial to the works of other Postmodern artists. But in general, Liu has successfully fused Eastern and Western traditions, combining the graceful elements of traditional Chinese painting with West- ern style. The juxtaposition seems inevitable. "I am trying to in- vent a way of allowing myself to practice as a Chinese artist out- side of Chinese culture," she explains. "Perhaps the displaced meanings of that practice-reframed within this culture-are meaningful because they are displaced."3 Liu's work can be read as a struggle for artistic identity, but even more importantly, as a struggle to define her conflicted per- sonal identity. "I often feel suspended between the two cultures, but I see this is as a unique position, hopefully a situation that will energize me," she explains. "I can look at things from multiple points of view. It is a position I embrace rather than feel bitterness about."35 Liu's work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. She has been included in major exhibitions, such as "Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art" at the Asia Society Gallery in New York and the "43rd Biennial Exhi- bition of Contemporary Painting" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and has done site specific installations in Balti- more, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Her numerous awards in- clude two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and the Eureka Fellowship from the San Jose Museum of Art. Today Liu lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, art critic Jeff Kelly, and son, Ling Chen. Since 1990 she has been Assistant Professor of Art at Mills College, the women's college in Oakland that re- cently reaffirmed its single sex identity. Liu's paintings of Chinese women focus on the persistence of memory. It is of paramount importance to her that the experi- ences of her subjects are not forgotten. Recovering the history of these women acknowledges their relevance in the female struggle for equality both then and now. It also aids in forging a place for contemporary Asian-American women. Liu continues to work to- ward her goal of functioning "much as the ancient scholar-painters of my homeland did, so that my art is the consequence of a re- search process in which images from the past are recovered, re- evaluated, recognized, and re-presented in terms relevant to my own and I believe to our multicultural experience today."36 NOTES 1. Lisa G. Corrin, "In Search of Miss Sallie Chu," in Can-ton: The Balti- more Series (The Contemporary, Baltimore, March 19-May 28, 1995), n.p. 2. Moira Roth, "Interactions and Collisions: Reflections on the Art of Hung Liu," in announcement for exhibit of the same name at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, May 23-June 27, 1992. 3. Margo Machida, "(re) Orienting," Harbour (August-September-Octo- ber 1991), 37-43. 4. Xiarorong Li, "Painting the Pain," Human Rights Tribune (Spring 0 This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:15:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1992), 12. 5. Joan Lebold Cohen, "Art in China Today," Art News (Summer 1980), 64. 6. From interview with Hung Liu, September 1993. 7. Ellen Johnston Laing, The Winking Owl: Art in the People's Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), 64. 8. From interview with Hung Liu, Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1992), n.p. 9. Robin Cembalest, "Goodbye, Columbus?" Art News (October 1991), 108. 10. Liu, SECA Award. 11. Hung Liu, Artist Statement, The Last Dynasty (Steinbaum Krauss Gallery, New York, October 14-November 18, 1995), n.p. 12. Jim Edwards, Precarious Links (San Antonio Museum of Art, July 7- August 26, 1990), 26. 13. Liu, quoted in Li, "Painting the Pain," 10. 14. Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California, 1983), 32-33. 15. Ibid., 39. 16. Hu Shih, "Women's Place in Chinese History," in Li Yu-ning, ed., Chi- nese Women through Chinese Eyes (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 5. 17. Alison R. Drucker, "The Influence of Western Women on the Anti- Footbinding Movement: 1840-1911, in R.W. Guisso and S. Johanessen, eds., Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship (Youngstown, N.Y.: Philo Press, 1981), 179-80. 18. Julia Kristeva refers to Freud's perception of footbinding in About Chinese Women (London: Marion Boyars, 1977). 19. Ibid., 83. 20. Edwards, Precarious Links, 27. 21. Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China, 39. 22. Kristeva, About Chinese Women, 82. 23. Liu, quoted in Li, "Painting the Pain," 11. 24. Liu, SECA Award. 25. Ellen Johnston Laing, "Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in their Hair," Orientations (February 1990), 37. 26. Interview with Hung Liu, September 1993. 27. Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), 15. 28. Ibid., 33-34. 29. See Margo Machida's summary of the event in "(re) Orienting," 42. 30. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979), 1-5.

31. Ibid., 3-5. 32. Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," in The Politics of Vision (New York: Icon, 1989), 51. 33. Machida, "(re) Orienting," 37. 34. Lucy Lippard, Mixed Blessing: New Art in a Multicultural America (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 137. 35. Interview with Hung Liu, September 1993. 36. Hung Liu, Artist's Statement, Capp Street Project, San Francisco, 1988.

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