Traditional imagery of women as seen through female visual art: Hung Liu

This paper examines the work of Liu Hung (1948–) a Chinese-born contemporary painter living and working in America. A significant part of her prolific artistic production focuses on what she calls “mythical poses” of women, taking inspiration from the old images of prostitutes and nameless women from the nineteenth and twentieth-century China. Assuming that old photography is the source for Liu’s visual narrative, this paper intends to analyse how traditional woman imagery is seen through the eyes of the artist. I argue that in her visual narrative, the woman imagery goes through a double process of deconstruction and reinterpretation. The artist extracts some descriptive elements from old photos, in order to isolate the most distinctive traditional symbols of Chinese society. Then, she depicts these elements in the canvas, using them as a visual a citation quoted in order to represent the image of woman in traditional China and to describe the way the Chinese culture has looked at them. These symbols are reinterpreted and given new meaning, acting as a critique about the same imagery. Focussing on some works of art, this paper will analyse this process of deconstruction and reinterpretation.