Wednesday, July 30, 2008

A Chinese Version of Feminism

These are some pieces by contemporary Chinese women artists.


The artist, Xiao Lu, makes a culturally and theoretically valid point when she observes that there are various forms of feminism. Cultural context is of primary importance when it comes to our efforts to understand gender relations in areas and geographic contexts other than our own. Looking at non-Western cultures via West-colored lenses is problematic and not conducive to an unadulterated decoding of other cultural notions.
The Times feature today on modern art by females in China is definitely worth a read. Read it in its entirety here.
graphs per ny times

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What kind of art life is there in places like Shanghai and Beijing? Per conventional research, the livelier the art life in big urban areas, the better off the said urban places.
I agree on the cultural feminism point. Quite often culture isn't taken into enough of a consideration

Anonymous said...

Being in the visual arts realm myself, I'm really impressed by some of these samples. It's great to hear of women gaining more visibility and promenance. Sexism, alas, sees no boundaries. That was a really neat piece on the Times. Thx.

Anonymous said...

Oh, do you know anything about modern clothing in China? Is there something contemporary to the Japanese Harajuku style over there? It'd be interesting to see what kinds of textile texts there's out there.

Anonymous said...

mad hair!