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song "16 Blades of Grass"
In Honor of the up coming Hung Liu Exhibition we are offering this song to you free as a gift. Enjoy.
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Hung Liu
Internationally-acclaimed Chinese mural artist:
I first came across Hung Liu while watching a PBS (or WTTW) documentary
on her.
She was high a top a ladder working on
a 12 foot high painting,
letting the paint drip
like it was almost getting washed away in the rain.
I was Struck by her paintings because they seemed almost like paint dripping photographs.
With Asia having such a strong and beautiful presence in Hawaii,
the context of her work is somehow
comforting to me in my Pacific Ocean orientation.
She is having a show in Indiana Jan. 23 to March 3,Hershberger Art
Gallery,
and she is speaking February 15th @ Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen
College Music Center at 7:30pm,
Reception:
Sunday, Feb. 15 immediately following her lecture
Cost: free and open to the public
we intend to go.
In her own words:
"I have been painting in America since 1984, but Chinese history has always been the essence of my work. I grew
up singing The Internationale. In my middle school English class, our teacher gave us the English version of the lyrics. We
once truly believed in Communism, in a socialist Utopian dream, and in heroism. I have since replaced those beliefs with a
kind of modern humanism, but some fundamental values and ideology from my thirty-six years in China stay with me. I was never
interested in being a victim struggling in an authoritarian society. I admired heroes and wanted to be a tough solider. Even
today, when I’m wounded, I’d rather lick the blood and get back to work – like the women soldiers in “Daughters
of China,” the 1949 propaganda film that serves as the basis for my most recent paintings. Usually I paint from historical
photographs of China, but in this case the film offered me a sequence of panoramic stills, each frame filled with the heroic
and desperate struggles of eight female soldiers who, in 1938, sacrificed their lives to save the retreating Chinese army.
I saw this film as a child in China, and it shaped my expectations of women as protagonists in the emerging socialist utopia.
Of course, utopia never arrived, but a kind of hard won feminism stayed with me the rest of my life, and served me well in
America. History is not a static image or a frozen story. It is not a noun. Even if its images and stories are very old, it
is always flowing forward. History is a verb. The new paintings are my way of painting life back into my memories of a propaganda
film that, over time, has become a document of the revolutionary sincerity that permeated my childhood. Even the actors in
the film believed in their roles. When they walked into the river, carrying their dead and wounded, they were going home."
Here's a Montage of Hung Liu's work,
and below that, some info about her.
Here is some info about her and her work.
Liu's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally
in such venues as the Smithsonian Institution, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Museum of American
Art and the Walker Center. She resides in Oakland, Calif., and is a professor of visual arts at Mills College.
Liu
was born in Changchun, China, in 1948. She grew up in Beijing during the time of Mao Tse-tung, the Cultural Revolution and
Tiananmen Square. After graduating from high school in 1968, she was sent to the countryside where she worked with peasants
seven days a week in the rice and wheat fields for four years. During this time she photographed and drew portraits of local
farmers and their families.
In 1972, Chinese schools began to reopen and Liu entered the Revolutionary Entertainment
Department of Beijing's Teachers College to study art and education. She graduated in 1975 and began teaching art at the
Jing Shan School, an elite Beijing school. She also began weekly art lessons for children on television. Her program, "How
to Draw and Paint," was renowned, and lasted several years. In 1979 she was accepted to China's two leading art schools;
she chose the Central Academy of Fine Arts where she majored in mural painting.
In 1981, she was accepted into
the visual arts graduate program at the University of California at San Diego. Her passport was delayed, though, until 1984
when she departed Beijing and began her graduate studies. In 1991, she returned to China and discovered a treasure of turn-of-the-century
photos of Chinese prostitutes, which became source material for her paintings.
Liu's unusual biography infuses
her work with a unique richness; her paintings are steeped in Chinese culture, contemporary and ancient. While she has a foot
in both cultures – Chinese and American – her art is born of a traditional Chinese art education. She fuses images
from seventh century Tang tomb mural paintings of princes and princesses with Western.
Liu connects her life experiences
with her interests in history, gender, identity, Chinese politics and culture to create compositions that pose questions while
offering a moment to stop and contemplate.
Liu is the 22nd Eric Yake Kenagy Visiting Artist Program speaker. The
program honors the late Eric Yake Kenagy, who was a gifted ceramics student at Goshen College from 1984 until his death in
1986. Through this program, his family and friends wish to celebrate the creativity Eric expressed in his too-short life,
and to share with Goshen College and its friends events that will inspire others to develop their own creativity.
Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News
Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.
