NOW
Dimensions: 60" * 144"
Media: Oil pastel and Acrylic on Canvas
My work echoes my intellectual and artistic defiance of historical and contemporary gender stereotypes in mainstream Asian art communities. It is also an act of resistance to the core values of Chinese society.
Having lived and studied outside China for over ten years, my experience of the fraught tensions between Western and Asian cultural concepts of freedom and personal expression became central to my work. Especially after experiencing compelled blocking of my posed artworks on Chinese social media.
My paintings are created with specific gender content and explicitly challenge Chinese traditional female cultural images and forms. I apply paints vigorously using traditional tools such as brushes and pallet knives; and by using my fingers to push back again what tradition represents. In addition, I challenge traditional Chinese femininity by posing semi-nude, referring to overtly 'masculine' gender performance and symbolic representation of male status in society.
My art practice is an act of freedom and defiance for myself as a Chinese woman. Here I create space to express complicated thoughts and feelings. I hope my work will bring attention to the structural injustices against women in Asian communities and empower Asian women by propelling women to step out of people's inherent impressions and do things they 'should not do within their cultural construct. Ultimately, promote the understanding of Asian women's social status in Asian countries and improve the social awareness of Asians in the United States
Having lived and studied outside China for over ten years, my experience of the fraught tensions between Western and Asian cultural concepts of freedom and personal expression became central to my work. Especially after experiencing compelled blocking of my posed artworks on Chinese social media.
My paintings are created with specific gender content and explicitly challenge Chinese traditional female cultural images and forms. I apply paints vigorously using traditional tools such as brushes and pallet knives; and by using my fingers to push back again what tradition represents. In addition, I challenge traditional Chinese femininity by posing semi-nude, referring to overtly 'masculine' gender performance and symbolic representation of male status in society.
My art practice is an act of freedom and defiance for myself as a Chinese woman. Here I create space to express complicated thoughts and feelings. I hope my work will bring attention to the structural injustices against women in Asian communities and empower Asian women by propelling women to step out of people's inherent impressions and do things they 'should not do within their cultural construct. Ultimately, promote the understanding of Asian women's social status in Asian countries and improve the social awareness of Asians in the United States
