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DOUBLE VISION: THE ART OF HUNG LIU
Nancy Walkup"Art has to be relevant to the world, to
who you are, to the environment you
live in, your cultural-historical back-
ground and your personal experi-
ences."
Hung Liu
The Artist
Hung Liu, a contemporary
artist born in China and now residing
in the United States, appropriates
images from historical photographs to
create paintings and mixed media
installations that express her bicultural
perspectives and concerns with social
issues related to immigration and the
treatment of women and children. A
two-time recipient of a National
Endowment for the Arts Painting
Fellowship, Liu is presently an
Associate Professor of Art at Mills
College in Oakland, California.
Liu was born on February 7,
in Changchun, China, in 1948, a year
before the establishment of the
People's Republic of China. The
Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976
closed universities and sent students,
including Liu, to be "reeducated" by
work in the fields. Following her
"reeducation" she first attended the
Beijing Teachers College, then studied
mural painting and later taught at the
Central Academy of Fine Art in
Beijing (formerly called Peking). The
only acceptable artwork in China at the
time was the state-mandated
Communist version of Socialist
Realism so Liu had no choice but to
conform in what she taught and what
she painted.
Liu emigrated to the United
States in 1984 to attend graduate
school at the University of California
at San Diego. Upon graduation she
taught for several years in Texas andbegan exhibiting her work around the
country, especially in San Francisco
and New York City.
Picturing History from a Bicultural,
Feminist Perspective
Liu appropriates images and
ideas from historical and family pho-
tographs, writings, calligraphy,
acupuncture charts, Tai Chi diagrams,
documents, maps, and other similar
source materials for paintings and
mixed media installations. Liu paints
on large, shaped canvases in an indi-
vidual, characteristic style, often
applying paint thinned with linseed oil
so that it drips, runs down, and partial-
ly washes away her photograph-like
images.
Freed from Chinese-mandated
prescriptions since her immigration to
the United States, Liu's work reflects
sociopolitical issues of bicultural iden-
tity, displacement, marginality, femi-
nism, sexism, and racism. Her prima-
ry perspective is bicultural, a hybrid
experience based on her voluntary dis-
placement and the differences between
her two worlds. Liu says she arrived
in the United States with a "Five-thou-
sand-year-old culture on my back.
Late twentieth-century world in my
face."
Speaking of the changes that
occurred in her work after moving to
the United States, Liu said "I shifted
my art work from socialist realism, the
style in which I'd been trained, to
social realism. It transformed my per-
sonal identity crisis to a crisis of cul-
tural collision" (Roth, 1992). Liu's
bicultural identity was evident in her
work from her earliest American exhi-
bitions. One critic (Roche, 1989)
wrote "her work suggests that revolu-
tion and tradition, as well as personaland cultural identity, are interwoven in
the tapestry of an individual's life."
Concerns about Chinese
American cultural stereotypes generat-
ed by movies and photographs and
experiences of Chinese immigration
are filtered through the often ironic
lens of Liu's bicultural and feminist
perspective. Liu has said of her bicul-
tural experience (Lippard, 1990):
As an escapee from propaganda art
in China, I looked toward the
ancient artists of my culture and
traveled extensively among the
ancient monuments. Here,
however, the reproduction of
traditional work is seen as
academic and unimaginative--
unless one selects iconography
form the past and inserts it,
collage-like, into the present...
Consequently, I have become
interested in the peculiar ironies
which result when ancient Chinese
images are reprocessed: within
contemporary western materials,
processed, and modes of display.
Liu summarized her artistic
efforts in a statement written for
her Capp Street Projects in San
Francisco (Lippard, 1990):
All in all, I am trying to invent a
way of allowing myself to practice
as a Chinese artist outside of
Chinese culture. Perhaps the
displaced meanings of that
practice--reframed within this
culture-are meaningful because
they are displaced.
Customs (right)
Hung Liu
Courtesy of Steinbaum Krass GalleryI ~,-.n.-.
ITRENPYIP)G.'90
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Reynolds, Nancy. Double Vision: The Art of Hung Liu, article, Spring 1998; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1050986/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.