—Exchange with Wu Wei about Random Association and “Bald Girls” as a Symbol in Art
By Juan Xu
Mr. Wu Wei’s article “Avant-garde Feminism Is Not Random Association: In Reply to Xu Juan” seems to have learned a lesson from his previous article that is based on too “general and simple” methodology. To prove that “the bald head” is something “chic” in the present cultural context in China, he searched on the Internet for the names of some celebrities which he should have provided in the previous article.
一Random association and symbol in art
Mr. Wu started with criticizing Li Xinmo’s “Vagina’s Memory” as outdated, “simplified exposure”, and denounced them as a “vague and ambiguous” association and an “imbecile rough graphic formula”, on the ground that “sexual violence is no longer something pervasive, only limited to some areas, some people or to some circumstances”. Is it really the case? In China’s human right report 2007, we find the following on sexual violence against women:
“…There were laws designed to protect women, children, persons with disabilities, and minorities. However, in practice some discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, and disability persisted.
Women
Rape is illegal, and some persons convicted of rape were executed. The law does not expressly recognize or exclude spousal rape. According to official statistics, 32,352 cases of rape were reported to police in 2006. Violence against women remained a significant problem. There was no national law criminalizing domestic violence, but the Marriage Law provides for mediation and administrative penalties in cases of domestic violence.
In August 2005 the NPC amended the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights specifically to prohibit domestic violence, although critics complained that the provision failed to define domestic violence. More than 30 provinces, cities, or local jurisdictions passed legislation aimed at addressing domestic violence. In 2006 and 2007, several provinces, including Shaanxi, Guangdong, Gansu, and Zhejiang, passed regulations requiring police to respond immediately to domestic violence calls, otherwise the police will be subject to penalty. According to a 2005 survey by the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), 30 percent of 270 million families had experienced domestic violence, and 16 percent of husbands had beaten their wives. The ACWF reported that it received some 300,000 letters per year complaining about family problems, mostly domestic violence. The actual incidence was believed to be higher because spousal abuse went largely unreported. According to experts, domestic abuse was more common in rural areas than in urban centers. An ACWF study found that only 7 percent of rural women who suffered domestic violence sought help from police. In response to increased awareness of the problem of domestic violence, there were a growing number of shelters for victims. Most shelters were government-run, although some included NGO participation… (Mr. Wu can find more information online if he likes) (1 ) I wonder how he could draw the conclusion that sexual violence is not something pervasive.
Next, Wu criticized Li’s art symbols as “by no means specific”, “a rough graphic formula”, with nothing extraordinary”. Now let’s see hat he meant by “special, concrete and extraordinary”.
It is about writing on the female body with a brush pen strokingly. Which is more profound, the pen or the naked female body? According to Wu, neither is in the swim as many artists, Zhang Qiang, for example, have adopted similar practice long ago. When reproductive organs are used in the work, according to Wu, it means “simplified exposure”, whereas the female body he used in the mass media should be labeled original? When one feels it hard to produce good artworks, he touches the female body with a brush pen, thus evoking some obscene associations. This work shows us a kind of metaphysical disorder at work that blocks the connection between the brush and the pen. It fails to tell us about the referential quality of art, as well as the target of the concrete context. The picture talking like interpretation arouses our interest in how Wu “complicatedly” challenges the social conventions.
Take Wu’s “Red Flag” series for instance. 1. Bending over the floor with a red flag in the mouth. 2. Dressed in an ancient costume imitating ancient people. 3. Worshiping the national flag beating hammers (see reference in Li Xinmo’s blog article “’The Bald Girls and Questionism”). Both the red flag and the Cultural Revolution were out of date and even overused in the 1980s, so there is little critical dimension, and even little entertainment value. Why isn’t “holding a red flag in the mouth a “vague and ambiguous” association but something special, specific and extraordinary cultural significance? Does the red flag, the least “simplified” symbol as we know, signify the most effective criticism?
Wu’s “Women’s Past Tense in ‘The Bald Girls’” does not give enough interpretation on “the bald head” as a symbol in art. Rather it only superficially talked about pictures and made random associations, never penetrating into the depth of “the bald head”. “The exhibition is thus named”, wrote Lan Jiny, “has no direct literal connection with “bald”… “Homophonic to The Bald Prima Donna, a famous play written in the 1930s by Eugène Ionesco, a French playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd, the title is metaphoric of the multiple Chinese reality, as well as the awkward conditions of women due to the new social structure of absurdity and disorder. It is both funny and annoying that this abstract adjective that has originally be used to allegorize the social reality should become concretized the moment the exhibition opened.”
To “The Bald Girls”, it is not “the bald head” but the abstract significance inherent in the art symbol of “the bald head” that matters
II. To develop the awareness of being a subject
I don’t know why Wu is strongly against using “menstruation”, the most important female feature, to represent the special connection between a female symbol and society. “Menstruation painting”, as a matter of fact, is not simply about female biology or female identity. It is actually aimed at building the sense of “blood” from the perspective of women as an independent and active being, “bald girls” in this sense.
Globally the West saw the heydays of feminist movement in the 1960s and the 1970s and their achievements. But on the whole, this world is still in the hands of men, and we are living in a patriarchal society in which men take politics, economy and culture in control. Men have the final say.
Over a hundred years, Chinese women, shackled by “political power, clan power, patricentric power and theocratic power”, have long remained silent. However highly skilled they are, the heroines in Kungfu novels had to show female humbleness and virtue when in contact with a clan leader.
Compared with the modern feminist movement in the West, women’s emancipation in modern China followed a different route. “The grand unification in Chinese tradition not only gives little room to individuals but also rules out opposition, so women’s liberation in modern China does not mean setting women free from men— rather it means freedom as a nation.” (3) It is not the result of women’s awareness of oppression based on gender difference. Instead when revolution and the nation prevailed, it became a movement in which women’s interests and that of a nation were closely connected, so it was about “getting liberated” that started from the government. During the May Fourth Movement, Chinese women realized for the first time that in modern times they were “salves to the slave”, therefore beginning their self-enlightenment and pursuit as independent individuals in the modern sense. Thanks to their awareness and effort, women have achieved the right to employment, education and other equality in the Republic of China era, but they still had a long way to go before they got the right of inheritance and right to participate in public affairs.
In the early 1950s, however, their budding self-awareness was soon overwhelmed by class difference and class struggle. Women thus gave up their opportunity to struggle for individuality and bravely took up the difficult task as proletarian. As plays or films show, that period of time was flooded with “communist queers” whose femininity was eclipsed by combative qualities, like Li Tiemei, Aqing, etc… These female characters did not accept the traditional virtues like “beauty and virtue”, but they had little awareness of the self, like a neutral revolutionary machine, without personality or individuality. Marxism and Leninism had such strong influence that Chinese women were ready to give up their independence and liberation for the sake of revolution and work with men to pursue their communist ideal of the emancipation of mankind. The liberation that began on the national level and spread to the individual came as a shock to the radical Leftists in the West who were in a different context. Heroines in model operas, as “Communist queers”, became anti-traditional female rock-and-roll singers in the West, pioneers and role models in women’s liberation movement.
Prior to the opening up, women’s liberation was mixed with national liberation and class struggle due to the special political culture, so women seldom stopped to ask themselves who they were, the most essential human concern, and failed to develop the awareness of independence to fight patriarchy. Then in the early 1980s feminism spread to China from the West, leading to a different voice in art and literature. It was this voice that challenged conventional thinking and moral standard in China and led to discussions about women’s independence that differed from national liberation and class struggle. As free economy and mass media developed, well-educated women in the cities began to gain confidence —something they had never cared in the past. As the capitalist market expanded, women’s newly formed confidence met great challenge from the consumerist market. The capitalist market and mass media joined to split women’s liberation movement. We can indeed refer to what Wu said, “As far as culture is concerned, today’s China is a mixture of tradition, modernity, post-modernity and contemporaneity. Issues about women (Patriarchal issues) are no exception.” The well-educated women in the city then became confident artists, entrepreneurs, writers, journalists or urban white-collars. Meanwhile, with the integration of capital came money replacing the right to ideology, so feudalistic thinking, which had been discarded in the Republic of China era and Mao’s era, came back to life. Some women, willingly or unwillingly, returned to their traditional role in the family and accepted their role of dependent, and some even became accessory. Under the cover of ideology, we find Chinese women’s awareness in a chaotic and absurd mess.
It is absurd that some fashionable women, including well-educated ones, deny women’s independence as social being and are afraid of expressing their opinions from women’s point of view, or even demonize women’s right. Unlike traditional women who take their fate lying down as a victim, M, a well-known female public figure, also a pioneer in sexual liberation in China, bravely challenged conventional model and ethics that is based on gender difference, putting an end to the sense of superiority that men get in “conquering” women in a patriarch society and liberating women from their passive, materialized and subordinate role in sex-related issues. This “modern” women, however, would rather be called “a loose woman” or “rubbish” than admit her awareness as an independent being that struggles against patriarchy.
Throughout the past century, from the rule prohibiting foot-binding and the founding of female schools in the Republic of China era, to “women can hold up half of the sky” in Mao’s time and the female Red Guards, women’s liberation and feminist rights have not shaken the structure of our patriarchal society, and there is a long way to go before women’s multiple dimensional awareness of the self and independence as individual is built.
With self-reflection, “The Bald Girls” is intended to promote the women’s awareness of the self in order to help Chinese women to make their presence as a human being in the real sense in the diversified postmodern society.
III. It is not “being bold” that matters
“Bald Girls Art”, based on the concept of “the bald head”, is a new element in feminist art and feminist criticism in China. “The bald head”, as an independent art symbol, is a vehicle for post-feminist campaign. It revokes social gender and highlights diversity. In a discussion about feminism, any description of “women” is susceptible of gender-based discrimination. The only way that can cover and go beyond gender is to maintain “differences”, multi-dimensional difference, including the freedom to make choices against the natural gender, that is, the so-called Queer theory. Here we can borrow something from Li Xianting’s “It Is Not Art that Matters”: it is not “the bald head” that matters but “its possibility to break through the limitation of culture and ideology to eliminate prejudice and see the disadvantages, not only in matters concerning female artists but also in the statement that shows their attitude toward key issues in the field.” (2) “Bald head” art is not something about “fashion” as part of the mass consumer culture, and neither is it a marginal sub-issue about women. Rather it is a discussion that aims to call for respect for differences and diversity of life among individuals, as well as our choice as individual. A “bald head” can be a man or women, or neither of them, but man or woman, the self or the other, they are all “different”, and the variety of differences reduces the natural gender to something unimportant. In this case Wu’s criticism against “The Bald Girls” for the old “art concept, thinking and methodology” are based on general, stereotyped assumption. The rational design of the exhibition takes advantage of the “bald head” as an expression in art to show “differences” so as to update social awareness. The “bald head”, as a form, represents the externalization of women’s pursuit of self liberation and self reflection. It has little to do with Wu’s accusation of this exhibition as “hopeless self-protectionism”, and still less with “talking about pictures and making random associations”. These women challenge convention, deconstruct patriarchy and feminism, break the boundary between men and women, and build the concept of equality between individuals, as well as between men and women—all through individual effort. Wu, however, accused them of failing to liberate themselves from outdated concepts and methodology. It is his ingenious invention.
On the basis of “the internal connection”, “The Bald Girls” take into consideration the reality of Chinese women in contemporary context, include women’s right into human rights, struggle for gender equality, and thus put forward “pre-feminist” “bald girls” as a term in art. In the meanwhile, “The Bald Girls”, given the 21st century global context, introduces the rebelling image of “the bald head” as post-feminist elements, an art symbol, to call for original feminist art works as well as a new paradigm for feminist criticism in China. They redefine the direction of female art experiment in China, its self expression and the possibility to get out of the self-induced crisis and trap.
1. online information
2. Lan, Jiny. “Being Bald: From Abstract to Figurative and to Abstract”, blog on www.artintern.net, May 6.
3. Linda Nochlin. Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists. Trans. Li Jianqun et.. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2004: 1.
4. Luo, Li. Feminist Art Criticism. Beijing: Jiuzhou Publishing House, 2010: 66.
