微信分享图
打开APP

Feminism In China

  It is complicated to figure out why China, in the sense of western academy, has very few feminism artists. As everyone knows, western feminism arose in fifties or sixties in last century, acting as a social right movement that women pursue completely equality as men. There are two backgrounds: Initially, the Second World War, as a total warfare mobilizing the whole society's energy and resource, drove men to the battlefield and also took women away from families. A large number of women entered factories and took part in the work of social production, thus changed their social status of being housewives. Secondly, the surging “left-wing” movement after the Second World War provided feminists with spiritual weapons and built a contracting, conflicting ideology relative to western social structure transform. In China, however, the liberation of women started from new culture movement and has the matching standard or value judgment with the enlightenment. But after PRC found, every stratum achieved the major reform of women social identity required by the development of ideology and society. After 1950s, women set foot in almost every field, and the slogan "Women can hold up half of the sky" became some sort of official standpoint in the form of art. So the social right feminists strived for (especially represented by suffrage in western countries) was achieved directly by the social movements from top to bottom. Let's bring out a typical example: In 1980s, the Chinese Women Federation even issued a document demanding suspend activities like model or beauty contests with the reason that " consider the selective look in the contests and standard of paying more attention to physical beauty instead of inner beauty are discrimination to women". Background like this led Chinese feminism artists turned quickly to the grasp of women's gender consciousness, self-senses and vague identity and they are usually more willing to talk about feminie with art rather than liberal feminism, let alone radical feminism.

  In this sense, WANG Shu-Ping is a rare exception. Right from the start of the creation, she showed precisely the intense interest and attention to the motif of feminie. In her early works, the main features of the females are with relatively exposed wearing and white-reverse eyes. The exposed wearing hints a look of "human sexuality" but she showed in flat color than the strokes of sensuality and lust. The white-reverse eyes hint the absence of some spirits, some rejection of delivering self-awareness and some tendency of being puppets. In this reason, no matter what name or theme is given to the work during that period, or how private, intimate, lively the scenes were decorated, they are all revealing women, in a way of showing the absence of women. Flat stroke and glazy eyes all suggest the identity of "otherness" where women are watched and the loss of self-narration. Women were asked by men to be attractive while owning "the opposite sex" glamour while were required to abide social morality and restrain desire, and the gap between social tolerance on the desires of male and female seems to be great. In Wang's series around 2008, the red padlocks on the women's bikinis have showed that clearly. As it were, the strong awareness and striking inquiry in gender and problems have run through Wang's creation.

  Nevertheless, these are still not persuading enough to distinguish WANG Shu-Ping from other feminism artists until the series G20 Summit showed up. G20 Summit didn't mean her concern has turned to grand social narration or she has started to care about women's fate in grand visual field, for the grand visual field is still being looked from the male perspective. In fact, this work didn't break the continuity of style and technique while just changed the settled scene to some fictitious conference. It is well known that politics is ruled by men, and even if a woman appears, she would be required to be like an "iron lady". The spy on women politicians' private life and their uncompromising tacts usually mixed up in the literary description, and once the identity of female politician has been set up, her feminity would be dispelled immediately. So, from the convention of positive rhetoric, the description of the relationships between female and politics should be become more and more usual and lively, restoring these female politicians to their original state. Yet, WANG Shu-Ping’s policy is reverse rhetoric, she replaces all the leaders at the meeting with those white eyes female figures. That conference scene is simple and is like dreamland, and those female conventioneers are whispering, dazing, absent-minded or having balderdash. WANG Shu-Ping didn't try to redefine the relationship between women and policy, but to explain politics itself from women's angle. She didn’t try to investigate women’s rights to take part in politics, but to clear up the seriousness of politics or deconstruct those settled "political figures" and "political images" from the perspective of women. Those female figures kept on showing their white eyes and mental anesthesia as usual. However, it is no longer the suggestion of absence of women only, but hints the absentees who were being represented in powers counsel and the political struggles. When we see Wang Shuping's artwork from feminism's perspective, the Breakthrough significance lies not only in the "female exist" in politics and society, but also "female voice" and "female perspective" in the political and social life, and believe this voice and perspective can be supplement and correction to the initial centralized voice.

  Hence, in this sense, WANG Shu-Ping's work can be regarded as a creation of feminism which own local Chinese characteristics, an art variant which dispels antagonistic words.

是否打开艺术头条阅读全文?

取消打开
打开APP 查看更多精彩
该内容收录进ArtBase内容版

    大家都在看

    打开艺术头条 查看更多热度榜

    更多推荐

    评论

    我要说两句

    相关商品

    分享到微信,

    请点击右上角。

    再选择[发送朋友]

    [分享到朋友圈]

    已安装 艺术头条客户端

       点击右上角

    选择在浏览器中打开

    最快最全的艺术热点资讯

    实时海量的艺术信息

      让你全方位了解艺术市场动态

    未安装 艺术头条客户端

    去下载

    Artbase入口

    /