Half the Sky: A Study of Gender in the Work of Three Contemporary Chinese Women Artists

Irene Ho
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2015
BA

Subject: Installation, Sculpture and Mixed Media
Country: China
Period: 21st Century

10,000 words

This thesis presents the work of three contemporary Chinese women artists-Lin Tianmaio, Hu Xiaoyuan and He Chengyao - in the context of gender. Their oeuvres are expemplary of the work produced by Chinese women artists of generations following Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of 1969-1979. These women artists have worked with a new set of themes and issues relating closely to personal experience and memory. Through the focus on specifically female experience, their work is almost invariably presented (and inevitably read) in a gendered fashion. Using Lin, Hu and He’s opera as case studies, the dissertation will aim to show that these generations bring the political to light through a study of three key themes. These are tradition, body as theme and material and motherhood and loneliness.

Irish Georgian Society

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Half the Sky: A Study of Gender in the Work of Three Contemporary Chinese Women Artists