Transcultural Chinese Art: Queer & Feminist Perspectives


Contemporary Chinese art has become increasingly visible in recent years. Books such as Wu Hung’s Contemporary Chinese Art and exhibitions like Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World contribute valuable narratives to the Western European and North American-dominated field of contemporary art. However, Chinese art surveys, like contemporary art’s “global turn” more generally, are often limited by nation-state boundaries and predominance of heteronormative patriarchal voices. Nation-based categorizations ignore Chinese cultures’ expansive heterogeneities, local contexts, and transnational flows; hetero-male figures dominate the pantheon of contemporary Chinese art, further exposing the burgeoning field’s limitations. Defying these limitations, this session examines queer and feminist art related (but not bound) to “China” – considered as transcultural construct vs. contained/containable nation. Inspired by Fernando Ortiz’s concept of transculturation, originally theorized vis-à-vis American colonialism; queer feminisms, illuminated by art historians such as Amelia Jones and Erin Silver; and queer China studies, developed by Petrus Liu and others, this session posits transcultural, queer and feminist perspectives as capable of broadening the field of contemporary (Chinese) art. Presentations examine artists Jon Wang, Simon Leung, and Ren Hang’s queer visions of cosmopolitan Chinese cities; Ma Liuming’s performances as ecofeminist-queer interventions; hybridity in Yee I-Lann’s porcelain installations; and the transcultural queer feminisms of curator Abby Chen’s WOMEN我們 exhibition. This session considers contemporary Chinese art outside national confines, highlighting intersectional identities and perspectives (building on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s formulation) of artists representing, critiquing, and/or otherwise imagining “China” in transition.

Field of Study:






Chair:
Jenny Lin,University of Southern California - jennyling@uoregon.edu
Discussant:
Boreth Ly,University of California, Santa Cruz - boreth.ly@utah.edu

Queer Cosmopolitan China
Jenny Lin, University of Southern California
China, EcoFeminist and Queer
Jane Chin Davidson, California State University, San Bernardino
Queer Chinese Feminist Archipelago: Shanghai, Miami, and San Francisco
Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Florida International University