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7 Jun 2024 / by Grey Matter

Undercurrent: Retracing the Narratives of the Conceptual Practices of Chinese Women Artists in the 1980s and Early 1990s

Two images side by side. The image on the left is of a bright red sculpture with a square u- shape. The image on the right shows a small workplace crafted from a sawn tree trunk, on which there are two ornamental doornails shaped like human breasts, one upturned and the other right side up. Also on the trunk are scissors, a hammer, and a single glove.

Details of Huang Yali’s Solemn series (1986) and Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door (1990). ©️ Qiu Ping and Huang Yali. Image courtesy of the artists

Research group Grey Matter, recipient of the Sigg Fellowship for Chinese Art Research 2022/23, investigates the conceptual practices of Chinese women artists in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, official ideological strictures gradually loosened in China. Cultural relations with the outside world slowly resumed, and foreign publications about modern and contemporary art, culture, and philosophy became available in the country.

In September 1979, the avant-garde Stars Art Group, which comprised of more than twenty artists, held a non-official open-air exhibition. The styles and themes of the works in this Stars Art Exhibition were a complete departure from the art in China during the Cultural Revolution. The exhibited artworks did not serve the function of political propaganda. Instead, they were products of the artists’ creative expression. Li Shuang (born 1956, Beijing) was one of the founders of the Stars Art Group. After being sent to work in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Li returned to Beijing, where she participated in numerous underground art salons and became acquainted with artists and poets such as Mang Ke, Bei Dao, Yan Li, Huang Rui, and Ma Desheng. Li was an artist as well as an organiser for the Stars Art Exhibition. Following the spark that was ignited by the Stars Art Group, other female artists also became involved in similar avant-garde groups that emerged throughout the country.

Monochrome photograph depicts three individuals: one woman in the centre, flanked by two men. They stand before a crowd of people. The woman is smiling and pointing towards something out of frame to her left. A man in the foreground, on the left side of the image, gazes towards the central trio.

At the Stars Art Exhibition in 1979. From left to right: Liu Xun, Li Shuang, Wang Keping. Photo: Li Xiaobin, courtesy of Li Shuang

This essay presents the stories of selected women artists born in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Seeking to create a more inclusive and diverse portrayal of art history, our research team drew on archival materials, interviews, and artwork analysis to explore the important yet overlooked contributions women artists made to conceptual art following its arrival in China in the 1980s. All our subjects lived through the traumas of the Cultural Revolution. Many were sent to rural areas for work and re-education. They experienced material and cultural deprivation, with some being forced to cut short their primary education. Many of these women, however, also experienced artistic awakenings during this period. Their encounters with political propaganda, including posters, sculptures, and model operas, exposed them to different methods of artistic production. Some of these women later became part of a small minority of female students to receive a tertiary education. After graduation, many still faced slights and oversights, both intentional and otherwise, as well as other displays of society’s ubiquitous gender discrimination, including in the form of motherhood penalties.

Faded magazine photograph featuring a display space with wooden walls. A cluster of four paintings hangs within the room, accompanied by dozens of Coca-Cola cans suspended from the ceiling at various heights. Behind this cluster of works hangs a painting with thick black brush strokes on a light-coloured surface. In the foreground is a partially obscured artwork, incorporating painting and cloth-like material. Along the bottom of the image, in Chinese characters, is text related to the artwork.

Suspended Coca-Cola Cans by Liu Yiling, a member of the Xiamen Dada group, at the Xiamen Dada: Modern Art Exhibition in 1986. The December 1986 issue of Meishu magazine wrongly attributed this work to another artist. © Liu Yiling

This essay offers an in-depth discussion from three perspectives of women artists who undertook creative journeys into the realm of conceptual art in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. These women broke away from the stylised depictions of the real world that were made with traditional media (such as oil painting, ink painting, and sculpture) and engaged in diverse experiments with the formal languages of art. They had open-minded approaches to materials and techniques, and their artworks were not static and self-contained, with some requiring audience interaction. Their status as women also profoundly influenced the content and expression of their ideas.

I. Inspired by Everyday Objects: the Use of Readymades

Ever since Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, the appropriation of everyday objects has been one of the most important techniques of conceptual art. The use of these ‘readymades’ dramatically expanded the realm of artistic materials while also challenging the idea that artworks are the creations of artists.

Xiamen Dada member Liu Yiling (born 1958, Xiamen) employed readymades in her Suspended Coca-Cola Cans installation at the Xiamen Dada: Modern Art Exhibition, which opened in September 1986. Comprising more than 100 empty cans of Coca-Cola hanging at varying heights from the ceiling, the installation marked Liu’s first time employing readymades in her work. It was also the first installation made by Liu, who had previously focused on oil painting. This creative shift may have seemed sudden, but the underlying conceptual transformation did not happen overnight. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, Liu studied the influx of texts about humanities, social sciences, as well as Chinese and foreign art history. She had also contributed to the internal academic lecture series that accompanied the Xiamen Dada: Modern Art Exhibition, laying the groundwork for the growth in the creation, development, and significance of modern art.

Photograph of a smiling young woman, gazing towards something outside the frame to her right. Behind her, out of focus due to the scene’s depth of field, is a painting featuring white brushstrokes upon a background of red and blue hues. ​​Coca-Cola cans are suspended in front of the woman.

Xiamen Dada member Liu Yiling pictured with her installation Suspended Coca-Cola Cans at the 1986 Xiamen Dada: Modern Art Exhibition. Photo: Wu Ming, courtesy of Liu Yiling

For her installation, Liu used soda cans that were brought back by her brother, who was a sailor. Unlike the glass bottles of Coca-Cola that were produced in Xiamen, pop-top cans were considered imported luxury products at the time. After finishing a Coca-Cola, Liu would keep the can because she was fond of the light, delicate, and pretty packaging. While preparing for the Xiamen Dada: Modern Art Exhibition in 1986, Liu turned her attention to the empty soda cans she had accumulated. Rather than treating Coca-Cola as a symbol of consumer culture or the large-scale importation of Western products into China during the country’s reform and opening up, Liu was more interested in the can’s material characteristics, such as its texture, shape, colour, and weight. By creating an installation, she was able to bring these characteristics into focus.

Liu experimented with a variety of techniques before ultimately deciding to use thread to suspend the cans in the air. Despite occupying the greatest possible amount of space, the floating cans also appear light and free from oppressive boundaries. Liu was willing to break down the traditional barrier between an artwork and the audience by allowing viewers to walk through the installation so they could bump into the cans, elicit sounds from the collisions, and interact with the work in other ways. This viewing experience, in which the audience and the artwork share a relatively equal relationship, echoes fellow Xiamen Dada member Huang Yong Ping’s ‘diverse postmodern’ philosophy, which states that ‘[art] and life fully permeate, participate, and embrace one another.’[1] By using everyday objects from her life in her work, Liu transformed her life experience into art. It is noteworthy that Liu’s interest was first aroused by the material—the soda cans—and her idea for the Suspended Coca-Cola Cans installation only came afterwards.

In the mid-1980s, Shen Yuan (born 1959, Putian), who was also closely affiliated with Xiamen Dada, began creating installations using readymades. Shen attributes her foray into contemporary art to the four years she spent at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art), where she benefitted from the liberal atmosphere of the era, the resources in the academy’s library, and her interactions with fellow students. After graduating in 1982, Shen accepted a teaching position in Fuzhou. She eventually became a couple with Huang Yong Ping, and the two of them frequently discussed their ideas about art. The practices of the Xiamen Dada group also had an influence on Shen.

Several artworks are displayed in a gallery space with white walls and wooden floors. In the foreground, there is the installation 'Waterbed' consisting of a single mattress with a transparent cover and a metallic frame with tubular legs. On the back wall, there are two paintings.

Waterbed on display at M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation, photographed in 2021. Photo: Lok Cheng, M+, Hong Kong

During her studies, Shen began to feel the limitations of painting. She sought ways to overcome these constraints; she experimented with changing her painting methods, and she also dabbled in collage and creative writing. Then, in 1989, she was invited to participate in the China/Avant-Garde exhibition. She used this opportunity to realise her first installation, which was titled Waterbed. She used a soldering iron and a clear plastic sheet to create a mattress that she filled with water, fish, and plants. The mattress was then placed on a small foldable bed frame that Shen had bought in Beijing. The installation was one of the earliest Chinese contemporary artworks to incorporate live animals. Shen’s shift to installation art was an intuitive move that surprised even herself. Even though she did not know exactly what installations were at the time, she felt that using readymades and mixed media allowed her to break free from pre-existing theoretical frameworks of creation. Shen admitted that the Waterbed she made in 1989 was ‘a very crude thing’ that was not as pretty and precise as later versions. Nonetheless, the work told a story about that era: the waterbed was a new and trendy product in the early years of China’s reform and opening up, and the fish imprisoned within the mattress could be seen as a metaphor for the individuals living in an oppressive political environment.

Unlike Shen and Liu, who were both associated with the ’85 New Wave art movement in China, Hu Bing (born 1957, Shanghai) moved to the United States in 1986 and made the transition from oil painting to installation while living overseas. Hu created her first installation work, Kite No. 3 (1991), while studying at the Art Students League of New York. The work was a complete departure in both concept and medium from the Modigliani-style portraits Hu made when she was in China. Kite No. 3 was an experimental work that sprang from Hu’s explorations of new artistic languages. The installation comprises multiple rectangular acrylic boards of different sizes that protrude from a wall at various angles. Trapped within the acrylic boards are drawings on specially treated paper used for printmaking. The boards cast different layers of shadows on the wall, making it seem as if two-dimensional surfaces are entering a three-dimensional space and creating a visual metaphor for the artist’s transition from painting to installation. At the time, Hu was working as an assistant to Tadaaki Kuwayama, and her work was influenced by the Minimalist pioneer’s style. She deliberately avoided a narrative approach and instead pursued a simple and restrained aesthetic. The installation is also an early example of Hu’s use of the transparent materials that she favoured in her later works.

An oil painting on canvas features a woman with shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a green turtleneck top and a white overcoat and is positioned against a blueish-green background.

An oil on canvas painted by Hu Bing in the early 1980s. © Hu Bing

As a recent immigrant to New York, Hu felt particularly sensitive to her new and unfamiliar surroundings. This heightened awareness led her to discover new materials for her art from her daily life. At the time, she shared a single studio in Brooklyn with a few other artists in order to save rent. In 1980s Brooklyn, it was not uncommon for parked cars to be vandalised, and the smashed windshields captured Hu’s attention. For her 1995 installation, Unfunctional, she collected broken car windshields from scrapyards and hung them from a massive network of wire hangers that she had built. Though the windshields still retained their original shapes, their once-hard material now hung pliantly like delicate fabric, forming an unexpected textural contrast. At the exhibition site, fragments of glass would sometimes fall from the windshields, creating a feeling of unease among viewers. The material exuded a sense of violence, danger, and abjection, but it also possessed a certain crystalline beauty. In this sense, it became a reflection of the artist’s life during her early years in New York.

Large-scale mixed-media sculpture consisting of broken windshields draped between iron hangers supported by curlicue wires. The broken windshields resemble flowing fabric. The exhibition space is illuminated by natural light from a window in the background.

Hu Bing. Unfunctional, 1995. Mixed media installation (broken windshields and iron hangers). © Hu Bing

Liu, Shen, and Hu all made the transition from two-dimensional paintings to three-dimensional installations. They drew upon everyday objects around them and consciously incorporated these readymades into their art. Their early installations also encapsulate their ideas and thinking at that stage of their careers.

II. Combining New and Old: The Integration of New Ideas with Traditional Media, Techniques, and Symbols

While some artists embraced the appropriation of everyday objects, others remained dedicated to making things by hand and saw such practices as an indispensable part of their creations. Huang Yali (born 1954, Enshi) is an example of such an artist. Huang enrolled in the Hubei College of Fine Arts in 1975 and was assigned to the sculpture department. In 1986, after being exposed to the works and concepts of foreign modern and contemporary art through periodicals and other channels, Huang began to contemplate ways to update her own artistic language within this new context. She abandoned the realist approach of her earlier years and turned to more abstract formal experiments, as demonstrated by her Solemn series (1986). Rather than adopting avant-garde artistic techniques, such as the use of readymades, Huang drew on China’s long cultural heritage and expressed her artistic ideas with traditional media and techniques.

Photograph of seven abstract sculptural works made of wood, lacquer, and plaster in various geometric shapes placed on white plinths within a white-walled space. Each sculpture features a distinct colour. Along the bottom of the image, in Chinese characters, are details related to the artwork.

Huang Yali. Solemn series, 1986. Wood, lacquer, and plaster. © Huang Yali; Photo: Dai Changzhou

The Solemn series was inspired by the forms and symbols of artefacts from the ancient state of Chu, which was located in present-day Hubei and Hunan during the Eastern Zhou period from 771 BCE to 256 BCE. Many of these artefacts were unearthed during the 1980s at major archaeological sites, such as the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, leading to a wave of renewed interest in Chu culture and history. Around 1985, Huang visited almost all of the major museums and historical sites in central, western, and southern China and developed a profound interest in traditional bronzeware, stone inscriptions, and lacquerware.[2] For the Solemn series, Huang said she ‘sought to break down and reassemble the forms found in the Chu artefacts and simplify them to an extreme while endowing them with a modern consciousness’.[3]

The sculptures in the series vary in size and are composed of wood, plaster, and lacquer. They have mostly symmetrical structures, and their bold red and black hues create an eye-catching contrast. Red and black were important colours in Chu culture: red, which is reminiscent of fire and the sun, represented life and hope; black, which is often associated with the cold and darkness, symbolised death. In the series, a bright red sculpture of the Chinese character that means ‘concave’ (凹) has a clean-cut rectangular shape and smooth, planar surfaces. The black symbol painted in its centre calls to mind the double-antlered motif of Chu-style tomb-guarding beasts. In addition, some of the sculptures have shapes that resemble ancient bronzeware, while others are adorned with the curved organic patterns found on Chu lacquerware. Huang said she wanted viewers to walk among the sculptures as if they were traversing the realms of yin and yang or moving between the past and present. The works were made with a complex process involving multiple layers of lacquer to create an enhanced sense of temporality. Huang encouraged viewers to touch the sculptures so they could experience the beauty of the lacquer material first hand.

Wooden sculptural work of stag-like antlers positioned on an ornamented base.

Wooden sculpture of double-antlered beast, 475–221 BCE. Photo: Sean Pathasema/Birmingham Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 DEED)

At a time when material options for sculptures were relatively limited, Huang ingeniously made use of traditional craft techniques and symbols from local history. By combining these elements with a modern visual language and ideas, she managed to explore the mysteries of the distant past with a solemn tone while also allowing viewers to experience something completely new.

Another artist from Hubei, Qiu Ping (born 1961, Wuhan) also utilised handcrafted products after making the transition from painting to installation. As a student in the oil painting department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Qiu experienced a shocking awakening to new forms of art from lectures given by overseas visiting professors as well as from new texts that were added to the academy’s library. She initially planned on using her graduation project to experiment with new art forms, but her ideas were rejected by her more conservative academic adviser. Feeling that her creativity and enthusiasm were being stifled, Qiu sought out the opportunity to study abroad in Germany, where she hoped to enjoy greater creative freedom.

Qiu’s shift to conceptual art happened as a consequence of her studies at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1988. When she first arrived in Germany, she continued the painting practice that she’d focused on during her undergraduate studies. However, her professor Shinkichi Tajiri suggested that she take a break from painting and encouraged her to explore Berlin’s rich cultural resources. Qiu’s visits to art museums and galleries catalysed a transformation in her creative ideas. Conceptual art was widely represented in Berlin’s lively and diverse art scene in the late 1980s, and Qiu’s creative evolution was closely related to the works she exposed herself to while she was there.

Following two years of experimentation, Qiu created her first installation, titled Chinese Door, in 1990. From afar, the large-scale artwork resembles a bright-red wooden box that consists of a set of interior and exterior doors. The exterior door opens inward, allowing spectators to enter. Like the doors of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the outer door features nine rows of nine golden nails on each side. The eighty-one nails are a reference to the imperial harem system of ancient China, which is embodied by the phrase: ‘three palaces, six courtyards, and seventy-two concubines’. Standing in the darkness within the installation, one faces the tightly shut interior door, which resembles the front entrance of a traditional Chinese house. On this door, there are two nails connected by an iron chain. Due to their protruding form, door nails are also known as ‘breast nails’. For Chinese Door, Qiu spent an entire year hand-moulding the door nails so they would resemble a woman’s breast.

Exhibition documentation featuring a sculptural work placed in a courtyard-like space of a European-styled heritage building. The sculpture showcases Chinese-styled red doors adorned with decorative doornails. The doors open inward, revealing a second set of closed doors within. The inner doors are adorned with only two nails, one on each, and feature two metal chains connecting the nails.

Qiu Ping. Chinese Door, 1990. Wood, copper, and iron. © Qiu Ping

A flat surface covered with paper is used to arrange dozens of ornamental doornails that might be found affixed to gates or doors of traditional Chinese palaces. The doornails are shaped like human breasts.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

A small workspace features two ornamental doornails, one upturned and the other right side up, shaped like human breasts. Also on the workspace are scissors, a hammer, and a single glove. The workspace itself is crafted from a sawn tree trunk.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

Exhibition documentation featuring a sculptural work placed in a courtyard-like space of a European-styled heritage building. The sculpture showcases Chinese-styled red doors adorned with decorative doornails. The doors open inward, revealing a second set of closed doors within. The inner doors are adorned with only two nails, one on each, and feature two metal chains connecting the nails.

Qiu Ping. Chinese Door, 1990. Wood, copper, and iron. © Qiu Ping

A flat surface covered with paper is used to arrange dozens of ornamental doornails that might be found affixed to gates or doors of traditional Chinese palaces. The doornails are shaped like human breasts.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

A small workspace features two ornamental doornails, one upturned and the other right side up, shaped like human breasts. Also on the workspace are scissors, a hammer, and a single glove. The workspace itself is crafted from a sawn tree trunk.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

Exhibition documentation featuring a sculptural work placed in a courtyard-like space of a European-styled heritage building. The sculpture showcases Chinese-styled red doors adorned with decorative doornails. The doors open inward, revealing a second set of closed doors within. The inner doors are adorned with only two nails, one on each, and feature two metal chains connecting the nails.

Qiu Ping. Chinese Door, 1990. Wood, copper, and iron. © Qiu Ping

A flat surface covered with paper is used to arrange dozens of ornamental doornails that might be found affixed to gates or doors of traditional Chinese palaces. The doornails are shaped like human breasts.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

A small workspace features two ornamental doornails, one upturned and the other right side up, shaped like human breasts. Also on the workspace are scissors, a hammer, and a single glove. The workspace itself is crafted from a sawn tree trunk.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

Exhibition documentation featuring a sculptural work placed in a courtyard-like space of a European-styled heritage building. The sculpture showcases Chinese-styled red doors adorned with decorative doornails. The doors open inward, revealing a second set of closed doors within. The inner doors are adorned with only two nails, one on each, and feature two metal chains connecting the nails.

Qiu Ping. Chinese Door, 1990. Wood, copper, and iron. © Qiu Ping

A flat surface covered with paper is used to arrange dozens of ornamental doornails that might be found affixed to gates or doors of traditional Chinese palaces. The doornails are shaped like human breasts.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

A small workspace features two ornamental doornails, one upturned and the other right side up, shaped like human breasts. Also on the workspace are scissors, a hammer, and a single glove. The workspace itself is crafted from a sawn tree trunk.

The production process of copper breast nails for Qiu Ping’s Chinese Door, 1990, Berlin. © Qiu Ping

According to Qiu, she often finds new creative inspiration while she’s crafting something by hand. Following Chinese Door, she made more than 100 ceramic rice bowls for her 1993 installation, 1.2 Billion Rice Bowls for China, and it’s easy to see the semi-spherical bowls as a continuation of the copper breast nails she had previously crafted. The installation resembles a gigantic abacus. The abacus beads are replaced by rice bowls, and their positions represent the number 1.2 billion, which was China’s population at the time. Handmade by the artist, the rice bowls naturally have varying forms; some are round and full, while others have chips and cracks. The work can also be tied to Chinese folk wisdom, which often uses the rice bowl as a metaphor for one’s livelihood. In this sense, Qiu cleverly drew on the symbols of the abacus and the rice bowl to express the diverse living conditions of people in a heavily populated country.

Diagonally positioned sculptural work resembling a traditional Chinese abacus displayed on a white plinth. The abacus beads resemble rice bowls.

Qiu Ping. 1.2 Billion Rice Bowls for China, 1993. Wood and ceramic bowls. © Qiu Ping

While conceptual art often breaks from tradition, the artistic practices of Huang and Qiu demonstrate their ability to combine traditional media, handicrafts, and symbols with new artistic ideas, proving once again that conceptual art cannot be easily defined by its medium. As long as an artwork can effectively convey an idea or concept, the artist can employ any material, form, or method to create it.

III. A Different ‘Half the Sky’: Difficulties and Breakthroughs in the Expression of Female Subjectivity

Without a doubt, the common denominator of all the artists in this study is their status as women. In the era in which they grew up, the slogan ‘women hold up half the sky’ resounded throughout China, and its influence continues to this day. At the time, the officially promoted image of women was that of healthy, strong labourers and revolutionaries, and calls for gender equality were still based on masculine characteristics. Although some of the interviewed artists said they did not put any special emphasis on gender in their creations, it’s easy to find profound considerations of the circumstances of women and artistic expressions of female subjectivity in many of their conceptual works.

Propaganda-style poster featuring two women positioned at workbenches. In the background, a woman operating a sewing machine is depicted in monochrome, while the fabrics she works with are rendered in colour. In the foreground, a woman operating a machine stands by a workbench, depicted in colour. The poster includes red Chinese text along the bottom, conveying a slogan emphasising women’s engagement in production and household management.

Zhang Longji, Shanghai People’s Fine Art Publishing House. ‘Women! Produce enthusiastically, uphold your family in a hardworking and thrifty manner!’ Poster, 1958. Colour lithography on paper. M+, Hong Kong. © Shanghai People’s Fine Art Publishing House

In Chinese Door, for example, Qiu treats the door as a symbol of Chinese feudal traditions and patriarchal structures, and the breast nails represent the women who are trapped and oppressed by these systems. The physical structure, comprising a household door within the palace door, represents the feudalistic and patriarchal principle of ‘one structure for family and country’ and embodies the many obstacles on the road to liberation for Chinese women.

Chinese Door, which was first exhibited in Berlin in 1991, may have been the first time that a Chinese female artist dared to use the breast as a symbol to critique the oppression of women by feudalistic traditions and patriarchal structures. The subversive nature of Qiu’s work and her awareness of female subjectivity are especially evident since women’s breasts have been heavily eroticised by patriarchal culture. In addition to her work as an artist, Qiu also served as co-curator in 1998 for Half the Sky: Chinese Women Artists, an exhibition at the Bonn Women’s Museum in Germany. The exhibition, which focused on installations, featured the works of twenty-six Chinese female artists from around the world, marking the first formal presentation of art by Chinese women for a Western audience.

Exhibition Catalogue cover features the German-language exhibition title ‘Die Hälfte des Himmels’, the subtitle ‘Chinesische Kunstlerinnen’, and the publisher Frauen Museum. The catalogue’s editors are listed as Chris Werner, Qiu Ping, and Marianne Pitzen. The cover image depicts a wooden sculpture with tweezer-like shapes arranged among the bare branches of a tree.

Die Hälfte des Himmels: Chinesische Künstlerinnen (Half the Sky: Chinese Women Artists) exhibition poster, 1998. Bonn Women’s Museum, Germany. Courtesy of Qiu Ping

Hu also contributed an installation titled The Pregnant and the Aborted (1995) to the Half the Sky exhibition. If the breast nails of Chinese Door could be read as symbols of women’s bodies and circumstances, The Pregnant and the Aborted expresses the artist’s reflections on the uniquely female experience of childbirth. In 1980s China, sexual education was widely lacking, and strong prejudices remained against unmarried women who became pregnant. Against this backdrop, a friend of Hu had an unplanned pregnancy and was forced to undergo an abortion in a remote clinic with poor sanitary conditions. The friend faced derogatory treatment from the medical staff and suffered both physically and mentally as a result. Hu had already transitioned from painting to installation by that point and was in the process of further examining what she wished to express through her art. Her friend’s experience spurred Hu to create The Pregnant and the Aborted. The installation combines physical materials, light, space, and other elements to create a visual representation of a bodily experience that is often pushed into the shadows. With this work, Hu presents the effects that pregnancy and abortion can have on the bodies and minds of women in a specific social context.

Sculptural work made from latex sheeting, plastic jugs, and lightbulbs fixed to a white wall. The work consists of a series of bespoke segments. Each segment comprises a lightbulb enclosed within a jug pressed against the wall by a latex sheet, creating a distinctive bump effect. The jug is placed horizontally in most segments. These hang lower on the wall than the segments featuring vertically aligned jugs​​. Electrical cords connect the lightbulbs to power sockets, infusing the installation with a warm glow.

Hu Bing. The Pregnant and the Aborted, 1995. Latex sheeting, plastic jugs, and lightbulbs. © Hu Bing

The primary material of The Pregnant and the Aborted is latex sheeting, which resembles human skin in colour and translucence. Plastic water jugs hidden behind the latex ‘skin’ represent women’s bellies during various stages of pregnancy and abortion. Lightbulbs within the jugs bring the bellies to life, and the electrical cords that power them resemble umbilical cords. Pieces of white cotton gauze adorn the latex sheets like skirts, enhancing the artwork’s sense of personification. This installation has subsequently been exhibited in many cities around the world. The fact that The Pregnant and the Aborted has become one of Hu’s most widely shown works demonstrates the universality of the experience and thoughts that it expresses. Today, as women’s reproductive rights are once again challenged and threatened, the significance of this work is as relevant as ever.

Another intense expression of female subjectivity can be found in Dialogue (1988). This work is the first installation by Xiao Lu (born 1962, Hangzhou), who was a key figure in the shooting incident at the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition. While still a student at the secondary school affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Xiao was lured into an abusive relationship with a much older man, who was a revered master of Soviet Socialist Realism painting. Xiao’s hatred of her abuser and her weariness of mainstream art styles became enmeshed in her mind. For Xiao, Soviet-style painting ‘was represented by the wrong face, and it no longer inspired’ her.[4] During her sophomore year at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Xiao experienced a breakthrough thanks to the artist Maryn Varbanov, who had been invited from France to teach and establish an institute of wall hangings at the university. Varbanov felt that the two-dimensionality of painting was limiting Xiao’s creativity, and he encouraged her to experiment with conceptual art and to use whatever materials she liked to express her personal experiences. In her initial attempt to move from painting to mixed media, Xiao created Contemplation (1986), which combined oil painting with rubbings from stone steles.

Ink and oil painting on xuan paper with rubbings from stone tablets featuring Chinese characters in various styles and sizes. In the foreground stands a human figure, rendered in dark colours, with its back to the viewer.

Xiao Lu. Contemplation, 1986. Xuan paper, ink, oil paint. © Xiao Lu

Dialogue, one of Xiao’s graduation projects and her first true installation work, demonstrated a further expansion of the artist’s imaginative use of materials. The central components of Dialogue are two aluminium-alloy telephone booths that Xiao commissioned from the Hangzhou bureau of telecommunications. The telephone booths look almost identical to those that could be found on the streets of Hangzhou at the time. One booth has a black-and-white photograph of a man engaged on a call, while the other booth has a photo of a woman on the phone. As a student of the oil painting department, Xiao initially planned on depicting the man and woman with realistic oil paintings. But one of her graduate advisers, the artist Zheng Shengtian, suggested using photography instead to achieve the goal of realism. Xiao ultimately abandoned the use of oil painting in Dialogue, setting a pioneering precedent as a student in the oil painting department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts who used no painting techniques whatsoever for her graduation project.

Mixed-media sculptural artwork in a white-walled gallery space featuring a red telephone on a white plinth. The telephone’s receiver is dangling off the hook. On either side of the telephone are monochrome renderings of a woman and a man, each standing in separate phone booths, engaged in phone conversations. Above each phone booth is Chinese and English text that reads ‘Telephone’.

Xiao Lu. Dialogue, 1988. Mixed media. © Xiao Lu

Between the two phone booths in Dialogue is a red phone on a pedestal with a large mirror behind it. The phone’s receiver hangs off the hook, implying a break in communication. This image is drawn from Xiao’s personal experience: while she was a university student, she called her former abuser from a phone booth in Hangzhou to confront him about his actions, but he quickly hung up on her. Speaking about that moment in her life, Xiao said she felt ‘trapped within the phone booth’, as if she had been ‘abandoned on a desert island’.[5] This experience of pain, confusion, hatred, and shame formed the cornerstone of Dialogue.

On 5 February 1989 at the China/Avant-Garde exhibition, Xiao fired two bullets into the mirror between the phone booths in Dialogue.[6] The shooting shocked the world, and the exhibition was temporarily closed. Xiao’s bold act shattered the integrity of the installation’s appearance, but in doing so, she brought the work’s conceptual significance to fruition. The shooting—a dangerous and radical action—unleashed Xiao’s long-repressed outrage and denounced the unspeakable crimes perpetrated by her abuser. Through her art, she was able to avenge herself as a woman. Dialogue has, as a result, become an extension of the artist’s life experience. The narratives surrounding this artwork and the shooting incident have continued to evolve with the passing of time and have even been cleverly re-appropriated by patriarchal society, reflecting the unending difficulties that stymie women’s self-expression.[7]

A woman points a gun towards a sculptural artwork in a white-walled gallery space. The work, out of focus in the background, features a red telephone on a white plinth. The telephone’s receiver is dangling off the hook. On either side of the telephone are monochrome renderings of a woman and a man, each standing in separate phone booths, engaged in phone conversations. Above each phone booth is Chinese and English text that reads ‘Telephone’. The woman holding the gun wears a dark overcoat. Her hair is in a long ponytail.

Wen Pulin. Still image from Seven Sins: 7 Performances during 1989 China Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, 1989-2009, M+, Hong Kong, © Wen Pulin

Undercurrents and Waves: The Shifts of Femininity in Art

The women artists presented in this essay engaged in pioneering conceptual art experiments in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Most of them transitioned from painting to installation, but they used vastly different materials and methods, each with their own distinct merits. Everyday objects (such as soda cans, car windshields, and telephone booths), flora and fauna, traditional handicrafts (including lacquerware and ceramics), photography, and performances can all be found in these women’s creative work. Moreover, many of these artists considered the interactive relationships their works would have with viewers and the exhibition spaces. They had the courage to break away from traditional and monolithic viewing experiences, either by inviting spectators to pass into their artworks or by actively destroying a perfect mirror image, thereby using their actions to express their points of view.

Some of the works by these artists expressed ideas that were unrelated to gender, while other pieces contained fresh and distinctively female perspectives. Although they were not deeply versed in feminist theory, the artists drew on their individual life experiences as starting points to diverge from patriarchal frameworks so they could form their own creative practices and critiques. These were uncommon and precious creative acts in the social context of that time period. It is worth noting that these artworks did not feature thread, cloth, or other materials that were subsequently associated with ‘feminine qualities’. As such, we can see a clear distinction between these works and the ‘women’s approach’ to art-making that emerged from the mid-1990s onwards.

Amid the many artistic revolutions and advancements that happened in the 1980s, it is a pity that the contributions of these Chinese female artists were mostly overshadowed by other developments. Issues and perspectives related to gender were easily obscured by the grand narratives of the avant-garde art movement. By the time Chinese contemporary art and Chinese women’s art began to receive greater domestic and international attention as a result of the political and economic developments of the 1990s (namely, China’s opening up and reform, globalisation, urbanisation, and the rise of consumerism), many of these women artists had already become part of a diaspora and were rebuilding their lives in foreign lands and cultures as artists, wives, and mothers.

A large assembly is gathered in a spacious hall. People are seated behind rows of desks radiating outwards in a quarter-circle shape. Above the stage, a red banner with white text prominently displays the word ‘Welcome’ translated into multiple languages, including Chinese, Russian, French, and Arabic. Below the banner, the United Nations and China flags are hung. A panel of people are seated below the flags.

The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women convened in Beijing in 1995, marking a high point in the advancement of feminism in China in the mid-1990s. Photo: Maher Attar / Sygma Collections via Getty Images

Held in Beijing in 1995, the [8]United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women marked a high point in the advancement of feminism in China in the mid-1990s and contributed to the growing recognition of women’s art as a category.[9] The event’s massive influence reverberated throughout the art world, and in the 1990s, many exhibitions centred on Chinese female artists were held in China and abroad, including Women’s Approach to Contemporary Chinese Art at the Beijing Art Museum in 1995; a 1995 exhibition of new works by Li Xiuqin, Chen Yanyin, and Jiang Jie at the Central Academy of Fine Arts; Century. Woman in 1998; and the Beijing New Century International Women’s Art Exhibition in 2001. Many of the Chinese women artists who are well known today first burst into the limelight during this period. Compared to the women artists who preceded them, their works more clearly expressed the female perspective and generously presented the feminine characteristics that were suppressed during the ‘half the sky’ era. Examples of such artists include Yin Xiuzhen (born 1963, Beijing), who used her own old clothing to create her installation Dress Box (1995) as well as her Portable Cities series, and Lin Tianmiao (born 1961, Taiyuan), who created the complicated handcrafted multimedia installation Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) and wove her 1998 work, Braiding, out of large quantities of thread.

Art critic Liao Wen keenly observed this phenomenon and posited the concept of ‘women’s approach to contemporary Chinese art’, which includes a consciousness of life and physical experiences; the intuitive selection of fibres and other ‘sensitive, subtle, and stimulating’ soft materials; methods that often include fine, repetitive handwork; and the expression of sensory or irrational experiences.[10] Today, this formulation seems to exhibit the limitations of gender essentialism and falls into the trap of male-female gender binarism. But it also vividly captures the trends of the mid-1990s, when women artists rebelled against the Hua Mulan-esque desexualisation that characterised the previous era.

Sculpture and digital video. A wooden chest sits open on the floor displaying a neatly folded pink shirt embedded in a block of cement. Above it on the wall, a video shows the chest being filled with cement, entombing the clothes inside.

Yin Xiuzhen. Dress Box, 1995. Wooden trunk lined with paper, clothes, cement, bronze plaque, and single-channel VHS tape transferred to digital video (colour, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Sculpture consisting of an open suitcase on the floor. Inside the suitcase is a city landscape made out of folded, cut, and stitched pieces of clothing. The clothes create a landscape of skyscrapers, including a representation of Beijing’s Central Radio & TV Tower made out of jeans

Yin Xiuzhen. Portable Cities: Beijing, 2001. Suitcase, clothing, city map, light bulb, magnifying glass and speaker. M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Installation consisting of a digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and a black-and-white video. A giant monochrome self-portrait hangs from the top and faces our left at an angle. Countless white cotton threads trail from the rear of the self-portrait, forming a long braid on a low grey platform.

Lin Tianmiao. Braiding, 1998. Digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and single-channel digital video (black and white, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Lin Tianmiao

Sculpture and digital video. A wooden chest sits open on the floor displaying a neatly folded pink shirt embedded in a block of cement. Above it on the wall, a video shows the chest being filled with cement, entombing the clothes inside.

Yin Xiuzhen. Dress Box, 1995. Wooden trunk lined with paper, clothes, cement, bronze plaque, and single-channel VHS tape transferred to digital video (colour, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Sculpture consisting of an open suitcase on the floor. Inside the suitcase is a city landscape made out of folded, cut, and stitched pieces of clothing. The clothes create a landscape of skyscrapers, including a representation of Beijing’s Central Radio & TV Tower made out of jeans

Yin Xiuzhen. Portable Cities: Beijing, 2001. Suitcase, clothing, city map, light bulb, magnifying glass and speaker. M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Installation consisting of a digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and a black-and-white video. A giant monochrome self-portrait hangs from the top and faces our left at an angle. Countless white cotton threads trail from the rear of the self-portrait, forming a long braid on a low grey platform.

Lin Tianmiao. Braiding, 1998. Digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and single-channel digital video (black and white, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Lin Tianmiao

Sculpture and digital video. A wooden chest sits open on the floor displaying a neatly folded pink shirt embedded in a block of cement. Above it on the wall, a video shows the chest being filled with cement, entombing the clothes inside.

Yin Xiuzhen. Dress Box, 1995. Wooden trunk lined with paper, clothes, cement, bronze plaque, and single-channel VHS tape transferred to digital video (colour, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Sculpture consisting of an open suitcase on the floor. Inside the suitcase is a city landscape made out of folded, cut, and stitched pieces of clothing. The clothes create a landscape of skyscrapers, including a representation of Beijing’s Central Radio & TV Tower made out of jeans

Yin Xiuzhen. Portable Cities: Beijing, 2001. Suitcase, clothing, city map, light bulb, magnifying glass and speaker. M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Installation consisting of a digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and a black-and-white video. A giant monochrome self-portrait hangs from the top and faces our left at an angle. Countless white cotton threads trail from the rear of the self-portrait, forming a long braid on a low grey platform.

Lin Tianmiao. Braiding, 1998. Digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and single-channel digital video (black and white, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Lin Tianmiao

Sculpture and digital video. A wooden chest sits open on the floor displaying a neatly folded pink shirt embedded in a block of cement. Above it on the wall, a video shows the chest being filled with cement, entombing the clothes inside.

Yin Xiuzhen. Dress Box, 1995. Wooden trunk lined with paper, clothes, cement, bronze plaque, and single-channel VHS tape transferred to digital video (colour, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Sculpture consisting of an open suitcase on the floor. Inside the suitcase is a city landscape made out of folded, cut, and stitched pieces of clothing. The clothes create a landscape of skyscrapers, including a representation of Beijing’s Central Radio & TV Tower made out of jeans

Yin Xiuzhen. Portable Cities: Beijing, 2001. Suitcase, clothing, city map, light bulb, magnifying glass and speaker. M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Yin Xiuzhen

Installation consisting of a digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and a black-and-white video. A giant monochrome self-portrait hangs from the top and faces our left at an angle. Countless white cotton threads trail from the rear of the self-portrait, forming a long braid on a low grey platform.

Lin Tianmiao. Braiding, 1998. Digital print on fabric, cotton thread, and single-channel digital video (black and white, silent). M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation. © Lin Tianmiao

By this point, we have observed how the theories of conceptual art as well as various works and ideas of Western modern and contemporary art spread through China in the mid-1980s, exerting a potent influence on the artists who were active in the ’85 New Wave movement. In particular, artists were liberated from their reliance on painting, sculpture, and other traditional media, and they engaged in creative experiments with all kinds of objects found in their environments. Many women artists fervently explored alternative media and transitioned from painting to installation. This shift allowed them to more deeply express their own perspectives rather than simply creating realistic, visually pleasing images with traditional techniques taught in academic institutions. In their works, these artists convey their observations and thoughts of their identities as women. The works do not possess an obvious feminine quality and are not rooted in feminist theories. Rather, they express an awakening of subjectivity experienced by a generation of women artists who grew up in an era defined by the ‘women hold up half the sky’ slogan. These works can be seen as important and unique artistic practices in the fountainhead phase of Chinese conceptual art—they are an undercurrent in Chinese contemporary art that is worthy of retracing.

  1. 1.

    Huang Yong Ping, ‘Xiamen Dada—A Kind of Postmodern?’, Fine Arts in China, 17 November 1986.

  2. 2.

    Huang Yali, ‘Recollections of Yesterday: My 1980s Studio’, Blog.artintern.net, 18 November 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20140911024558/http://blog.artintern.net/blogs/articleinfo/huangyali/257013.

  3. 3.

    Chu Chi, ‘Hubei Youth Art Festival—Critical Abstract,’ Fine Arts in China, 1986.

  4. 4.

    Xiao Lu, Dialogue (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

  5. 5.

    Xiao Lu, Dialogue (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

  6. 6.

    According to Xiao Lu, when she fired a gun at her Dialogue installation at the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in 1989, police officers arrested only Tang Song because they could not fathom that it was a woman who fired the gun. Xiao turned herself in, and she and Tang were briefly imprisoned. The creative origins of Dialogue stem from Xiao’s experience of sexual assault. Due to social prejudices at the time, she chose to remain silent during the media’s investigations of the shooting incident. Her silence, however, made it possible for the entire art system to rewrite the story about her work, which was credited as a collaboration between her and Tang. Xiao’s firing of the gun was later associated with the political upheaval that soon followed that year, and her original intent to express female subjectivity was ruthlessly silenced and appropriated by patriarchal society. Xiao and Tang were romantically involved for fifteen years following their release from prison. During that time, Xiao never disputed the narrative that placed Tang as the co-author. The underlying logic of her silence further reflects the strictures of patriarchy, in which a woman is subordinate to her husband and must contribute all she has to their union. It wasn’t until 2004 that Xiao publically claimed sole authorship of Dialogue. See Xiao Lu, Dialogue (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

  7. 7.

    For further discussion of Dialogue, see Gao Minglu, ‘The Sound of Gunshots, Half a Life’s Dialogue: On Xiao Lu’s Dialogue’, China Guardian newsletter, no. 3 (2006): 98–101; Xu Hong, “‘She,’ ‘They,’ ‘He,’ Reflections on Xiao Lu’s Dialogue”, Art Monthly, no. 1 (2006); Zhang Runjuan, ‘Women’s Mistakes? Men’s Mistakes?—Thoughts on Xiao Lu’s Dialogue and the Authorship Controversy’, Artda, 26 December 2008, https://www.artda.cn/guoneixinwen-c-1085.html.

  8. 8.

    The concept of feminine characteristics that is mentioned here, though limited by gender essentialism, is often referenced in the context of male-female gender binarism.

  9. 9.

    Tao Yongbai, Jia Fangzhou, Xu Hong, Jiang Mei, Huang Lin, Wu Jing, Wu Yan, Wu Liang, Tong Yujie, ‘Symposium of 30 Years of Chinese Female Art’, Chinese Female Art (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Four Seasons Publishing House, 2016).

  10. 10.

    Liao Wen, ‘The Silent Subversion: the Turmoil beneath Women’s Approach to Chinese Contemporary Art’, Women’s Approach to Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing: Beijing Art Museum, 1995). Exhibition catalogue.

Grey Matter
Grey Matter

Grey Matter, a research group consisting of Yun Qiu, Xiaofan Wu, and Luqi Lin, was founded in 2022 in Shanghai. Its current research focus is on the conceptual practices of Chinese female artists in the last three decades of the 20th century.

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