Hung Liu: The Chinese-American Artist Essay

The mind changes, the leger changes, time doesnt stay still, narration is a verb, it is on passing, there is no quondam(prenominal) tense, future tense, record is constant Hung Liu told interviewer Rachelle Riech imposture (Riechart). Hung Liu is a Chinese wo homophile who was born in Changchun, China in 1948. She was born during the senesce which we c each the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which severely impacted her tone. She lived in China for 36 years and then left for the linked States. She now resides in Oakland, CA, where she teaches art at Mills College (A World of art).A lot of her fine art is base on photographs and memories she has from China and photographs shes taken in the United States. She takes photographs of pictures, re headstones them, usu entirelyy inunct paint on derrierevas, and slightly alters them by leaving washes and drips to verbalize how autobiography stopt be remembered fully from a picture. She also does art score for American explanati on such as a spot she did in South Carolina for Chinese raft who owned laundry mats (Riechart). I squargon up most of Hung Lius art encounter to be very(prenominal) historical and personal, because most of her ar iirk comes from her own photographs.Id deal to focus on how she addresses the struggles of universe an immigrant throughout the country, how Hung Liu maintains her cultural traditions in almost all of her artwork, and how she defines the word history. Hung Liu came to the United States during the 1980s, which was a rough time to be Asiatic in the United States. During this time we were having a recession and many auto industries were going out of business due to Nipp unrivalledse imports. Aside from that, it was not too languish after the Vietnam War had ended. Many factors contri yeted to the racial discrimination targeted against Asian-Americans.Although it was the Japanese making the cars and the Vietnamese during the war, unconditioned Americans would ration alize by saying they all look the same and would blame Chinese, Filipinos or any Asian race. There was a man named Vincent Chin in 1983, one year in advance Hung Liu immigrated to the United States, who was overcome to death with a baseball skim by a white man named Ebens, because Ebens believed Vincent Chin and his people were at switch for the fall of American auto industry. unmatch adapted dancer heard Ebens say explicitly Its because of you m otherfu*kers that were out of work was the accusation he made.Vincent was a newfangled man who was about to get marital in a few weeks in the lead he was murdered. His father was a Chinese immigrant who worked hard and owned laundry mats, and posterior served in the military for his citizenship and was later able to bring his wife and adopted son, Vincent, to the tolerant land (Yung). Hung Liu worked hard with extensive research to find that her fellow Chinese people who had been living in America before her had owned many laundr y mats and were very involved in the laundry business.When asked by a college in South Carolina to construct a opus for them, she designed clothe and had her family create them and this chip later off-key into a memorial for the laundry businesses in the South (Riechart). Figure 1 veto city Figure 1 prohibit City Another struggle that Hung Liu address that might turn out affected her life in California was that in the 1800s, Chinese women were shipped in and used as prostitutes nigh San Francisco for miners (Tedford). In 1991 Hung Liu painted the interdict City, set upn in strain 1, which shows exposed women in the require City of China.I purport like this painting is called Forbidden for four-fold reasons, one being the Palace in China was known as the Forbidden City, and also the painting ascertainms Forbidden because of the peeled women on the picture. Also I conjecture that because San Francisco is known as The City, the Forbidden City could refer to San Franc isco as well. This piece addresses her understanding of the difficulty of being a Chinese-American woman at the time. Hung Liu is very imperial of her ethnical background and is not mysophobic to show it.Almost all of her work has Chinese burnish in it, from the tantrum such as buildings or flowers to manything littler like calligraphy. A good warning is the Forbidden City piece that I previously mentioned. It addresses an issue that originated in California, but it shows the scenery of a Chinese Palace. She could put on done this because the issue probably affects several(prenominal) people in China. She also does some installation art called Resident terra incognita, show in figure 2. This piece has Chinese people doing Tai Chi, and has Chinese pillars with calligraphy on them.Also it has two piles of fortune cookys. It is believed that the fortune cookie represents a sexual slang for Chinese women (Tedford). Overall, these two pieces really incorporate the Chinese cultu re in Hung Figure 2 Resident Alien Figure 2 Resident Alien Lius art and show that she loves to express her culture. Figure 2 Resident Alien Figure 2 Resident Alien Figure 3 Refugee womanhood and Children Figure 3 Refugee Woman and Children The most distinctive characteristic Hung Liu has is the flair she defines the word history.The way she sees it is that although you can have a memory from a picture, you cant remember every degree from that picture, such as the words you verbalise that second or what happened exactly 20 seconds before that picture was taken, or counterbalance 20 seconds after. There are continuously missing puzzle pieces with history. She also believes history is a verb, because it is invariably happening and always going. History never ends and is always being made. The way she depicts her attitude towards history in her artwork is by leaving washes and drips of paint when she repaints a photograph.These washes and drips indicate the incompleteness of th e photograph. The drips are the fuzziness of memory (Riechart). Hung Liu uses this technique in the majority of her artwork and is very illustrious for it. The painting I chose to show her historical artwork is titled, Refugee Woman and Children, shown in figure 3. I chose this painting because it shows what was probably common for Chinese women who were refugees during times of war and were labored to leave China. You can also see all the drips she made on the painting, which she uses to show the unknowing of what was going on during that photograph. Hung Liu is a great artist.Shes well sensitive of the struggles of being a Chinese Immigrant in America where violent actions were taken on all Asians. Regardless of the risk it takes to be an Asian-American, she still proudly represents her Chinese culture in her art pieces, and she teaches the Chinese history through her art. Shes created her own elbow room and uses a drip technique to show how she defines history, and to show f rom her point of view how she sees the land and she uses photographs to show things that actually happened and were caught on camera. Overall, she is a very influential woman to other Asian-Americans and aspiring artists.