Author: campus

Communicatig Guanyin with Hair: Hair Embroidery in the Late Imperial China

Yuhang Li
(PhD Candidate, EALC, University of Chicago)

Friday, June 5, 4:30p.m.
CWAC, 152

Abstract

Hair embroidery is a particular technique practiced by lay Buddhist women to create devotional images during late imperial China.  The embroiderers used their own hair as threads to stitch figures on silk.  They particularly stitched Guanyin, the most prevalent female deity in China.  In recent works on women’s talent, scholars have cursorily mentioned hair embroidery, but they have failed to study it in detail. In this chapter, based on textual references
and surviving hair embroidered Guanyin images, I explore the technique of hair embroidery, its religious connotations and then analyze the cultural significance of this practice. When women embroidered these images of Guanyin, they would create an object out of their hair, and put the product embodying an intimate part of their bodies in temples for all to see.  In this way, women sought favors from Guanyin, asking her, for instance, to heal illness or demonstrate their filial piety towards their parents.  Thus by offering a part of themselves to Guanyin, they attempted to be close to her.  Investigating such practices sheds light on how intimate and non-intimate realms were constituted in relation to religious practice in late imperial China.

Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929):  Painter of Sublime Imperfection

Aida Yuen Wong

(Assoicate Professor of Fine Arts, Brandeis University)

Thursday, May 28, 6:00 -8:00 PM

Joseph Regenstein Library, Seminar Room 207

Abstract

Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929), a painter renowned for his unconventional approach to realism, produced an oeuvre that the casual viewer likely finds disturbing.  His distorted interpretations of Dürer and Jan van Eyck amounted to what the artist himself called “the Oriental grotesque.”  In an age when yōga (Western-style painting) was firmly established on the foundation of French (Post-)Impressionism, Kishida’s dark-toned still lifes and non-idealizing portraiture represented a major departure.  In the mundane, the imperfect, and the eery, he saw “internal beauty.”  How did Kishida arrive at this perspective?  What other sources besides the Northern Renaissance did he draw upon?  The talk traces his Asian references, exploring the moment when Japanese modernism was poised to challenge the hegemonic standards of its Western counterpart.  Possible connections with the Mingei (Folk-Craft) Movement will be investigated especially.

Monumental Memories: A Discussion of Xu Weixin and his Pedagogic Art. Chinese Historical Figures, 1966-1976

Stephanie H. Donald

(Professor of Chinese Media Studies, University of Sydney)

Tuesday, 4:30-6:30 p.m. May 19

Joseph Regenstein Library, Seminar room 207

Abstract

 Physical, aesthetic and emotional traces of difficult times may be both formally elided and yet crucially embedded in contemporary practice in arts and media, and this is quite evidently so in Chinese   responses to the Cultural Revolution. This paper pays attention to the analysis of a series of images which have been constructed pedagogically and self-consciously to commemorate and enlighten the 80hou generation.  In this discussion I explore the status of image recall, trans-regional and trans-generational ways of seeing, and the status of history in the process of of looking through and for affect in making sense of the series. The artist Xu Weixin has attempted to create a pedagogical, yet monumental archive in paint, but he has also tried to suggest a redemptive relationship between them and now.  I discuss the role of mimesis in his work, and the degree to which we can understand these paintings as fragments of dialogue across generations, or as a soliloquy?

Ruins and Travelers: The Representation of Roman Ruins in Yan Wenliang’s Work

Stephanie Su (Ph.D. student, University of Chicago)

Friday, 4:30-6:30 p.m. April 24

CWAC 152

 
Abstract:
This paper examines three representations of Roman ruins created by  the Chinese painter Yan Wenliang (1893-1988) in 1930. These three works are unique in early twentieth century Chinese art in terms of its subject matter. Yan studied art in Paris for two years from 1928 to 1930, and before he finished his education, he made a three-week trip to Italy with friends. Many Chinese artists of that time who studied in Europe also travel

“Home That Never Was: On Anxiety and Nostalgia of Korean Contemporary Artists”

Jung-Ah Woo

(Professor of art history in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, KAIST)

Friday, February 20, 4:00 -6:00 PM

CWAC 156

Abstract
This study investigates the works of three Korean artists: Suh Do-Ho, Kim Sooja, and Lee Bul. Since the early 1990s, these artists have emerged as visible figures in the international art scene, especially under the euphemistic rubric of nomadic identity and hybrid aesthetics. In other words, the body of their works was immediately embraced by the rapid influx of “postmodern” discourses to the Asian continent at the end of the century. Yet, the current military crises and financial catastrophes engulfing the entire globe complicate the understanding of such celebratory discourses of hybridity and nomadism. For the individuals living in this epoch of uncertainty, being hybrid and nomadic might invoke the fundamental anxiety of loss: loss of identity and original space.
The artists in this study have presented disparate modes of dealing with this sense of anxiety and nostalgia. I will argue that Suh generated nostalgia for his childhood home in Korea through architectures in fabric; Kim created an imagined location of origin in her video and performance; and Lee demonstrated her conscious rejection of melancholic attachment to organic body by offering cyborgs and monsters. These works clearly address the artists’ privatized memories, yet the individual processes of remembrance and representation offer a deeper understanding of the lost histories, as well as histories of loss in modern Korea.