Peggy Wang
PhD Candidate
Department of Art History
University of Chicago
“Debating New Mediums and Meanings in Contemporary Chinese Art in the 1990s”
Friday, April 23, 4-6 pm
CWAC 156
Abstract
In my paper, I trace how the problem of defining artistic meaning came to the forefront of the Chinese contemporary art discourse in the mid-1990s. This issue of how to locate and interpret meaning was prompted largely by the proliferation of new artistic mediums and formats from the 1980s onwards. During this period, artists not only adopted new materials and artistic interests, but also untethered themselves from previously established understandings about art and its historical legacy. In this paper, I focus on how this dynamic process of untethering took place at both artistic and epistemological levels. Through case studies, I will show how artists employed new materials and mediums to fracture the artistic process, destabilize meaning, and align themselves with a new history.
