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“新女性”：拒绝被定义的族群
新女性”：拒绝被定义的族群
图文未经《Hi艺术》授权，不得擅自使用
弗朗西斯·福山在《身份政治：对尊严与认同的渴求》一书（中文版，2021年）中提到“身份政治”的崛起。他认为当代社会已经从观念上的制度之争，转向了不同族群身份认同间的斗争。他将之称为“新部落主义”。
从20世纪六十年代开始，以身份认同为动力的社会运动此起彼伏，其中包括轰轰烈烈的女权运动。堕胎自由、生育自由、劳动自由等，女性可以做任何事，变成任何样子，这已经成为当代女性中的一面精神旗帜。从一开始为妇女争取与男性一样的待遇和机会，逐渐发展成坚持女性意识和生活体验与男性的截然不同，反对让女人像男性一样思考和行动。当代女性的身份认同被不断提纯，强化和巩固。不可忽视的是，在宏大叙事的笼罩下，越来越多的个体和小群体开始从背景中跳脱出来，凭其独特的生活经验，变成难以被单一维度，比如性别和种族，解读的社会图景。
常羽辰《使用价值（一块田）》 综合材料、装置 尺寸可变 2017-2021 何香凝美术馆展览现场 图片由艺术家提供
靳华 《邓迪》系列 尺寸可变 摄影、艺术微喷 2016-2020 何香凝美术馆展览现场 图片由何香凝美术馆提供
郭钰铃 《中餐美式烹饪画》 尺寸可变 书籍拼贴、丝制打印 原作创作于2018 何香凝美术馆展览现场 图片由何香凝美术馆提供
沈采 《毫无例外》 35x27cmx4 绘画装置、视频 2020 何香凝美术馆展览现场 图片由何香凝美术馆提供
骆佩珊 《轻盈》 三屏影像 20'06" 2012 图片由艺术家提供
张潇月 《生命线-烟火》 行为、视频 2018 何香凝美术馆展览现场 图片由何香凝美术馆提供
▼ “New Women”: A Tribe Refusing to be Defined On “In Working: Women in Art Practice” at He Xiangning Art Museum
——By Zheng Shu (Overseas art practitioner and art columnist）
Identity-driven social movements emerged one after another since the 1960s, including the roaring feminist movement, which demanded freedom of abortion, freedom of breeding, freedom of working, and many other rights, and claimed that women can do anything and becoming anyone, has become a spiritual banner for contemporary women. These movements began as a fight for women of equal wages and opportunities as men, then gradually evolved into insisting that female consciousness and life experiences are distinctly different from those of men, thus being opposed to asking women to think and act like men. Women’s identity in the contemporary world has been continuously purified, strengthened, and consolidated. But what cannot be ignored is that under the envelope of the grand narrative, more and more individuals and small groups begin to get rid of the context, and with their unique life experiences, become social pictures that are difficult to be interpreted by a single dimension, such as gender or race.
Artists who have been invited to participate in the recent exhibition “In Working: Women in Art Practice” at He Xiangning Art Museum are all overseas Chinese female artists. When I noticed the artist list, I couldn’t help but think of what Fukuyama calls the “small tribe”. Overseas Chinese women seem to be easily treated as composite, multiple identities with a specific spiritual belonging.
However, like Judith Butler, the American philosopher, and scholar on gender studies, has pointed out, such labels are fraught with contradictions: women can no longer be defined simply by race and gender due to the distinctions between individual experiences and social class. For instance, women executives at the top of the income range and actresses earning tons of money every day may share the same trouble with those salaried female workers and poor students, but more than that, they are fundamentally different because of the social class division.
Just as black women in the United States have always been depreciating of the mainstream feminism or elitism which is represented mainly by white women, Chinese women living abroad are also difficult to generalize or describe in terms of certain commonalities. Participating artists of this exhibition come from all over the world, of different social classes and generations. They work with a variety of media and languages, though appearing as a whole, being quite different in fact. Like a multi-prismatic mirror, anyone trying to find integrity in this exhibition would be bound to fail. However, if we appreciate an individual’s unique way of thinking, we seem to inevitably encounter a strong current of commonalities.
The first point I would like to address is that even after an evolvement of more than half a century, women’s consciousness in art still is mostly represented by the “female element in history”. Sewing, weaving, cooking, notes in detail, and handwork continues to appear in contemporary female artists’ works.
These labors that have been exclusively done by the female in history are like a pulse that could cross time, deeply rooted in female’s identity, and connect women from different times and spaces. Though Liu Beili’s red thread installation originated from a mythical story and Chang Yuchen’s contemporary clothing are different in terms of their theme and inspiration, they both “tacitly” agree that sewing and weaving are representations of women. American art historian Patricia Mainardi wrote in 1973: “Needlework is the one art in which women controlled the education of their daughters, the production of the art, and were also the audience and critics - it is our cultural heritage.”
Liu Beili once said, “I have introduced familiar and engrained gestures of women’s work as performances within my spatial compositions, making women’s labor visible, and present. The daily acts of domestic labor are seen as women’s work across cultures and time.”
Another participating artist, Yeu-lai Mo, has created a work titled “My mother’s Moulds”, in which she directly introduced the face towels that her mother used in the kitchen to wipe down the surfaces into her creation. The fibers broke down over time because of the detergents and bleach and became malleable art materials. “[M]y mother would ring these clothes out at the end of the evening and I would almost see her handprints in the hot steaming lumps.” Mo made this piece as a homage to her mother’s life dedicated to working tirelessly. These works happening to hold the same view bear witness to women’s persistent and restricted image historically in labor, which remains a highly recognizable label of female identity to this day.
The American socialist feminist Heidi Hartmann has argued that the material basis of patriarchy lies in the domination and compression of females’ right to work by men. The most important outcome of the contemporary women's movement is the freedom for women to engage in all forms of labor, and equal access to economic resources. But the fact that such labor elements as cooking, sewing, and weaving still picture so undoubtedly women’s identity is an irony of the contemporary environment for females.
But at the same time, the disregard and neglect of gender itself by contemporary female artists could also be noticed in this exhibition. Instead, they are contributing their examination and reflection on individual experiences, family memories, and their own culture, which is with no doubt positive if to say anything. As the participating artist, Jin Hua put it, “[M]y personal experience is that it is easier to reflect on one's own culture and identity under the positive and negative effects of the Western mainstream and multi-culture.”
Though such creations are not gender-oriented, their nature as the product of female “new production” is undeniable. Just as men do not have to be confined to gender issues and media, women no longer have to emphasize themselves as the “second sex”, but are well-matched with men to contribute poetic, science-fictional, or serious imagination and evaluations to human society.
I like these works very much, because they break through the traditional framework of “male technical culture” and “female aesthetic culture”, allowing women not to live or die with “beauty”. This is especially important for art. ～ The third point I would like to address here is the absence of contemporary female labor issues in the work of many female artists. I have wondered why contemporary female artists were not so much concerned with the current situation of most contemporary women’s lives as they were with history, the past, the universe, and the future. These works, built on fantasies, memories, mysteries, speculations, inferences, and analyses, often appear to be transcendent as “romantic” art and isolated from reality.
The reason for this is perhaps very simple. It reminds me again of Fukuyama, that in the contemporary social system, the identity of being an artist would likely lead to the result of alienation from the masses’ life experience. From this perspective, the identity of being an artist, like gender, race, and religion, could be a necessary element in the construction of a certain “new tribe of identity”. The education, training, and subsequent career, all lead to their lack of an understanding of the positions and feelings of most professional women. The average contemporary professional women's confusion, excitement, struggle, anxiety, and joy have gradually become the never-been noticed territory of art creation, concealed by topics and less talked about.
This is one of the biggest differences I’ve noticed between contemporary female artists and male artists. Male artists are rather willing to discuss the present, while female artists are highly interested in discussing everything other than the present.
However, in this exhibition, many overseas female artists have chosen to enter reality through the themes of “homeland” and “historical memory” in a detour. As overseas Chinese, they each bear a complicated or troublesome family history. Gayle Chong Kwan’s mother’s Scottish family was involved in the colonial administration in India, while her father was from Hakka Chinese and went to Mauritius. The memory of the “homeland” haunted by colonialism is accompanied by a complex and diasporic history. Kwan explores the implicit political thread in travel, trade, and food through simulacra, immersive environments, and sensory rituals. ～ Yeu-lai Mo’s parents run a small Chinese takeaway in the UK. Such takeaway is still everywhere in the UK today and is the most manifested embodiment of the resilience and hardworking of overseas Chinese. I remember in 2011, when I had just graduated, I took my parents on a trip to England. On a stormy late afternoon, we had to stop in an extremely remote town by the sea. In the mist and thunder, we slowly drove through the only commercial street in the town, expecting to find a restaurant where we could sit for a while. A shabby supermarket with cold light, a Turkish kebab store with no one there and meat of dubious source, hardware and motorities with its iron door pulled down, a couple of English middle-aged men bored in a pub watching soccer on TV in which the lawn was so green that seemed to project into the rain. Everything here is so simple and so unapproachable. Just as I was about to tell my parents that we might need to keep going though the visibility was too poor, I saw a warm yellow light, a small Chinese takeaway, the name of which I could still remember, “Ru Yi Chinese Food”. The counter was just inside the door and there were two tiny tables against the wall. My parents and I had a simple Cantonese-style Chinese meal inside. The owners were a couple from Guangdong or Hong Kong in the 1980s, who spoke very basic Mandarin and English with a strong accent. They asked where we were from and brought us hot tea. They proudly said that their eldest daughter was admitted to London University and was at that time an intern at the BBC.
When I saw those awkward Chinese characters written by Yeu-lai Mo, the four-color semi-transparent lightboxes, the menus, the lithographs, and the daily decorations, I immediately recalled that rainy evening. These overseas Chinese from the common working class are like seaweed, growing in the most untouched places, drifting and lonely. Through various elements of Chinese takeaway, Mo presents her family's unique and ordinary past in detail and documents her parents' hard work to earn a living realistically.
I also really like Liu Duoni’s work “on-street”, where she uses her musical background to try to break the language barrier through musical instruments. Most people who have lived in Europe have encountered street art activities such as singing, playing violin, or dancing improvisationally. Liu wants to bring contemporary art out of the isolated “art circle” and make it a casual activity for everyone on the street. This is a free, romantic, and simple aspiration of a contemporary woman.
In terms of identity politics, this exhibition itself is already a very interesting case: there is the failure to make an identity summary through gender, culture, and ethnicity, as well as the diversity of expression of identity subdivision in postmodern feminism. Meanwhile, as a whole, this exhibition reveals itself as a kind of thought demonstration of a new identity community with similar educational and professional experiences.
The two female curators of this exhibition, who both grew up and live in China, are also art practitioners, but they do not necessarily share the same identity as the participating artists. However, the two curators are willing to cross the gap between different visions, and turn their interest to fellow overseas women, observing with sincereness and curiosity, to build a stage for the reflection and experience of women from different ethnic groups. This is rather valuable. In today’s world of constantly reinforced identity politics, it is of more importance to be willing to and have the ability to break down “identity”.)
相关展览
在工作：艺术实践中的女性——海外华人艺术家邀请展
展览日期: 2021.12.29-2022.03.27
展览地点：何香凝美术馆4-8展厅
参展艺术家：常羽辰、董春华、关庄、郭钰铃、靳华、李韵霆、刘北立、刘多妮、骆佩珊、马文、毛羽丽、沈采、王美佳、王凝慧、张潇月、张亦飞
展览总监：蔡显良
策展总顾问：王璜生
策展人：李贝壳、刘希言
联合策展人：余湘智、陈卓尔
展览统筹：程斌、樊宁
公教与推广：骆思颖
信息宣传：房桦
展览助理：丁子莹、林钺
展览设计：汪娅星、良风设计
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