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Class Sexyundressedsingers Q A Sexy %25E5%25A5%25B9%25E7%259A%2584%25E4%25B9%25B3%25E5%25A4%25B4%25E9%25A9%25AC%25E4%25B8%258A%25E5%2583%258F%25E4%25B8%25A4%25E4%25B8%25AA%25E8%2591%25A1%25E8%2590%2584%25E4%25B8%2580%25E6%25A0%25B7%25E5%259D%259A%25E6%258C%25BA Szh 1 Sexy Undressed Singers Reclaiming their Bodies: Contemporary Chinese Women Artists

Class Sexyundressedsingers Q A Sexy %25E5%25A5%25B9%25E7%259A%2584%25E4%25B9%25B3%25E5%25A4%25B4%25E9%25A9%25AC%25E4%25B8%258A%25E5%2583%258F%25E4%25B8%25A4%25E4%25B8%25AA%25E8%2591%25A1%25E8%2590%2584%25E4%25B8%2580%25E6%25A0%25B7%25E5%259D%259A%25E6%258C%25BA Szh 1 Sexy Undressed Singers

are mostly open to the same facetiousness.  They remind me of Mary Acton saying of Jenny Saville’s art that it ‘asks us to think about women not in terms of ideal beauty or the male gaze but in the sense of who they really are’  — when it should be apparent that they tell us little if anything about who they really are, unless we believe that a person is just a lump of meat.  Andrea Liss called for ‘ways of representing that do not continue to allow the patriarchal scheme that divides women’s minds from our bodies and our desires.’

When Maurice Merleau-Ponty talked about the primacy of perceptions, and pointed out that they come through the body, so that he emphasised the importance of the ‘lived body,’ he did not envisage people examining their navels, but thought of the body as our ‘point of view on the world.’   We deny ourselves a full sense of ‘our body, our selves’ (to use a Western feminist slogan from the 1970s) if we never get beyond the vulva or the vagina or menses or even sex.  Perhaps it is only people who habitually go naked in the open air, like Australian Aborigines, who can fully experience bodily existence.  They become one with their sensory environment, so that the rhythms of nature are their rhythms, with vision reinforced by sounds, smells, tastes, and touch and by the meanings given to everything by stories and ceremonies.  The making of nets, bags, spears, burial poles, bark paintings, songs and dances is an intrinsic part of that seamless world; even non-Aboriginal city dwellers can rediscover something of it when they live in the open for long periods at a stretch.  This is the only true essentialism, the only true biological reductionism or determinism, because it is how we began, how we evolved, and how we have lived for the past million years, minus a couple of thousand.  From this perspective all the nudes and naked bodies of the art world are but half alive.  It is up to Chinese female artists to start working out how to represent the body of a woman as her ‘point of view on the world.’

In 2000 the female writer and curator, Jiang Mei, arrived at a similar conclusion regarding Chinese feminist art in general:

…Chinese feminist art of the 1990s on the whole is characterised by intimate private space (in explorations), self-contentment, self-cultivation and attainment…Chinese female artists rarely participate in the debates that are taking place on the international [level] or employ artistic means to express their views of contemporary international or local politics, society or culture.

The Indonesian female artist, Kartika Affandi-K？berl, born in 1934, achieved it in her powerful autobiographical paintings of 1981, Rebirth, and The moment of beginning.   The South Korean female installation and performance artist, Yi (or Lee) Bul, did it outstandingly in her 1994 work, The difference and the power, in which she stands naked, chained by the neck to a metal bed, and holding a pickaxe, ‘poised to break the binds of domesticity, sexual submission, or whatever the audience chooses to read into the act,’ wrote James Lee, ‘but in any case going about it the hard way.’   The Indonesian female artist, Arahmaiani, 1961– , voiced the issue in relation to her performance and photographic installation work, His-story on my body, 2000, when she wrote,

With our imagination, fantasy and ideology about power we control and shape our body, but we often forget this simple fact that the body has its own way, life, and intelligence; we tend to sink into the depth of the mind, into the abstract and the body (as concrete element) has to serve.

I wonder why the body has a small role in determining life?  Why it has to serve the belief or the ‘ideology’?  Why can’t we start to think from the body and from a very special part of the body called ‘the heart’?

The two male Chinese performance artists, Cai Yuan and JJ Xi, explained the use of their own naked bodies in their work as having ‘historical reasons behind it’: ‘Sometimes the body has been used to confront an oppressive regime.  In that sense the body can be used as a site for protest against corruption, reflecting the human spirit of freedom.’   They see their role as democratic, as keeping an eye on government and institutions, and criticising and protesting in order to keep society healthy;  unlike the anti-war protests by Yin Ling (see above), their performances are not intentionally erotic.

The fact that direct and explicit protest is much more dangerous in mainland China and dictatorial Singapore than in and post-martial law Taiwan is enough to explain the absence of protest art, otherwise we might expect to see attention on the bodies of female factory workers in sweatshops, minority women, tortured Falun Gong members, etc.  There is obviously a lot more reclaiming of bodies to be done.  Let Joanna Frueh have the last witty word: ‘Possessing the body empowers us with new sight, speech, and hearing.  Moreover, self-possession helps us to shoulder responsibility, stomach criticism, stand on our own two feet, head into the fray.’

APPENDIX
Cao Weihong, 1971, possibly Hong Kong
Chang Hsing-Yu, 1971, Taiwan
Chen Lingyang, 1975, Zhejiang, Beijing
Chen Yadan, 1942, Beijing
Chen Yanyin, 1958, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Australia
Cui Xiuwen (Cui Youwen), 1970, Harbin, Beijing
Feng Jiali (Jyali), 1963, Beijing
Feng Qianyu, 1974, Guangdong, Beijing, Guangdong
Fu Jiying, 1962, Beijing
Fu Xi, 1970, Sichuan
Gao Xiaolan, c.1975?, Hong Kong
Guo Qingling, 1973, Hunan, Shanghai
Guo Yan, Shaanxi, Xi’an
He Chengyao, 1964, Sichuan, Chongqing, Beijing
Heng, Amanda, 1951, Singapore, Perth, Singapore
Hu Ming, 1955, Beijing, New Zealand, Australia
Ji Xiaofeng, c.1975?, Qingdao, Beijing
Jiang Congyi, 1963, Henan, Beijing
Jiang Jie, 1963, Beijing
Jin Weihong, 1967, Nanjing
Kan Xuan, 1972, Anhui, Zhejiang, Amsterdam
Lai, Mei-Hua, 1948, Taiwan
Li Hong, 1965, Beijing, England, Beijing, New York, Beijing
Liao Haiying, 1967, Sichuan
Lin Tianmiao, 1961, Shanxi, Beijing, New York, Beijing
Liu Hong, 1956, Sichuan
Liu Manwen, 1962, Heilongjiang
Liu Yan, 1965, Beijing
Liu Yousha, c.late 1950s, Hunan, Hangzhou, Canada, United States
Ma Yanhong, 1977, Shanxi, Beijing
Nie Mu, 1973, Xinjiang, Beijing
Niu An (Ann New), 1970s, Shanghai, Japan, Shanghai
Qin Jin, 1970s, Guangdong
Qin Yufen, 1954, Qingdao, Berlin
Shao Fei, 1954, Beijing
Shen Ling, 1965, Liaoning, Beijing
Shen Na, 1979, Sichuan
Wang Nanfei, 1975, Jilin, Texas, Beijing
Wang Yingchun, 1942, Shanxi, Xi’an, Beijing
Woo, Nancy Chu, 1941, Guangdong, Hong Kong, New York, Hong Kong
Xiang Jing, 1965, Beijing, Shanghai
Xiao Huixiang, 1933, Hunan, Beijing, Los Angeles
Xing Danwen, 1967, Xi’an, Beijing
Xing Fei, 1958, Beijing, New York
Xu Hualing, 1975, Harbin, Beijing
Xu Jie, c.1970?, Shanghai
Xu Sa (Sasa), Beijing
Xu Xiaoyu, 1959
Yan Ming-hui (Ming-Huy), 1956, Taiwan, New York, Taiwan
Yang Fan, 1972, Guangdong
Yang Xiaojun, 1971/77?, Tianjin
Yang Yi, 1964, Sichuan, Guizhou and Beijing
Yin Ling, 1978, Taiwan, Japan
Yu Hong, 1966, Beijing
Yuan Yaomin, 1961, Beijing
Zhang Jie, 1980, Sichuan
Zhang Jihong, China, South Korea
Zhang O (O. Zhang), c.1970?, Guangzhou, Beijing, London
Zhang Ping, 1971, Xinjiang, Beijing, Shanghai
Zhang Shumei, 1954, Shandong?
Zhang Tiemei, Jilin
Zhang Yaxi, 1968, Chongqing, Beijing, Zhejiang, Paris, Sichuan
Zhang Yongping, 1979, Heilongjiang, Beijing
Zhao Mengge, c.1978, Henan
Zhou Ling, 1941, Tianjin, Beijing, Yunnan, Beijing
Zhou Nan, c.late 1970s?, Chongqing
Zhu Bing, 1964, Hubei, Beijing

(please check the word docu for proper display of footnotes)

  Victoria Lu, ‘The Rise of Feminist Awareness and the Feminist Art Movement in Taiwan,’ N. Paradoxa, no.16, July 2002, on the internet.
  >  See Gill Saunders, The Nude: A New Perspective, London: Herbert Press, 1989, where there are chapters called ‘Active versus Passive,’ ‘The Fetishized Female,’ and ‘Nature versus Culture.’
  Lisa Tickner, ‘The Body Politic: Female Sexuality and Women Artists since 1970,’ Art History, 1: 2, June 1978, p.239.
  See John Clark, Modern Asian Art, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998, p.286 and note 9 on p.298; Jennifer Cody Epstein, Iron Orchid, New York: Norton; London: Viking, 2006; and the film ‘A Soul Haunted by Painting,’ in which Gong Li plays Pan Yuliang.
  William Willetts, Chinese Art, 2 vols, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958, vol. 1, pp.384–86; William Watson, Style in the Arts of China, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, p.82, plate 71.
  Michael Sullivan, The Arts of China, 4th edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, p.8.
  See section on Xing Fei in Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, Who Am I: Chinese Contemporary Art by Chinese and Chinese-American Women Artists, exhibition catalogue, New York: Chinese-American Arts Council, 2004; www.karetzky.com/whoami-text.htm
  Zhang O, in Karetzky, Who Am I, 2004.
  Dru C. Gladney, ‘Constructing a Contemporary Uighur National Identity: Transnationalism, Islamicization, and State Representation,’ Cahiers d’études sur la Méditerranée orientale et la monde turco-iranien, no. 13, January–June 1992.
  See Clark, 1998, p.286.
  Hsingyuan Tsao, ‘Fun, Pleasure-Seeking, but Thoughtful: On Urban Popular Culture in China,’ Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 3: 2, June 2004, pp.89–102: see pp.100–01.
  Xu Hong, ‘Dialogue: The Awakening of Women’s Consciousness,’ translated by Claire Roberts, in Dinah Dysart & Hannah Fink, eds, Asian Women Artists, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1996, pp.16–23: see p.23.
  Shen Na, artist’s statement on Art Scene Warehouse website.
  Xenia Tetmajer, ‘She at Art Seasons China,’ Asia Art News, 14: 3, May/June 2004, p.77.
  Fa Fa Gallery website.
  All quotes from >  Anchee Min, Red Azalea, London: Victor Gollancz, 1993; New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
  Susan Kendzulak, ‘Bombs Away! Cai Guoqiang’s Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art,’ Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 3: 4, December 2004, pp.44–51: this quote from p.48.
  Zhang O, in Karetzky, Who Am I, 2004.
  Zhang O, in Karetzky, Who Am I, 2004; see also Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky, ‘Zhang O: In Transit,’ Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 3: 2, September 2004, pp.28–31.
  ‘It is too easy and self-restricting to identify the gaze as unilaterally male’: Jennifer M. Green, ‘Subject, Object, Camera: Photographing Women in The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ in Ronald Dotterer & Susan Bowers, eds, Sexuality, the Female Gaze, and the Arts, Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1992, pp.53–63: this quote from p.59; see also Ann Kaplan, ‘Is the Gaze Male?,’ in Women and Film, New York: Methuen, 1983.
  Avis Lewallen, ‘Lace: Pornography for Women?’ in Lorraine Gamman & Margaret Marshment, eds, The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, London: The Women’s Press, 1988, pp.86–101: this quote from p.86.
  Lorraine Gamman, ‘Watching the Detectives: The Enigma of the Female Gaze,’ in Gamman & Marshment, 1988, pp.8–26: this quotes from p.18.
  Saunders, 1989, p.118.
  Cassandra L. Langer, ‘Transgressing Le Droit du Seigneur: The Lesbian Feminist Defining Herself in Art History,’ in Joanna Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer & Arlene Raven, eds, New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, New York: HarperCollins, 1994, pp.306–26.
  Mary Kelly, ‘Desiring Images/Imaging Desire,’ in her Imaging Desire, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996, pp.122–29.
  Tetmajer, 2004, p.77.
  Maryse Holder, ‘Another Cuntree: At Last, A Mainstream Female Art Movement,’ in Off Our Backs, 1973, reprinted in Arlene Raven, Cassandra L. Langer & Joanna Frueh, eds, Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988, pp.1–20: this quote from p.1.
  Tetmajer, 2004, p.77.
  Laurie Essig, on the internet.
  Jin Weihong, quoted in Anna Zhong Tong Yue, ‘Jin Wei Hong,’ 2004, Shanghart Gallery website.
  Yve-Alain Bois & Rosalind E. Krauss, Formless A User’s Guide, New York: Zone Books, 1997; Rosalind Krauss, ‘Claude Cahun and Dora Maar: By Way of Introduction,’ in Bachelors, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999.
  Krauss, 1999, p.50.
  Sasha Su-Ling Welland, ‘On Curating Cruel/Loving Bodies,’ Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 4: 1, March 2005, pp.17–36: this quote from p.18.
  Wang Yun, ‘Brave Spirit – Chinese Female Artist Chen Lingyang,’ in Karetzky, Who Am I, 2004; Huangfu Binghui, ed., Moving On: Contemporary Chinese Art at NUS [National University of Singapore] Museums, exhibition catalogue, Singapore: NUS Museums, 2004, pp.56–75; Bernhard Fibicher & Matthias Frehner, eds, Mahj hClass Sexyundressedsingers Q A Sexy %25E5%25A5%25B9%25E7%259A%2584%25E4%25B9%25B3%25E5%25A4%25B4%25E9%25A9%25AC%25E4%25B8%258A%25E5%2583%258F%25E4%25B8%25A4%25E4%25B8%25AA%25E8%2591%25A1%25E8%2590%2584%25E4%25B8%2580%25E6%25A0%25B7%25E5%259D%259A%25E6%258C%25BA Szh 1 Sexy Undressed Singers Reclaiming their Bodies: Contemporary Chinese Women Artistsh q Singers Sexy19.net eClass Sexyundressedsingers Q A Sexy %25E5%25A5%25B9%25E7%259A%2584%25E4%25B9%25B3%25E5%25A4%25B4%25E9%25A9%25AC%25E4%25B8%258A%25E5%2583%258F%25E4%25B8%25A4%25E4%25B8%25AA%25E8%2591%25A1%25E8%2590%2584%25E4%25B8%2580%25E6%25A0%25B7%25E5%259D%259A%25E6%258C%25BA Szh 1 Sexy Undressed Singers Reclaiming their Bodies: Contemporary Chinese Women Artistsz Sexy Undressed Singers