{"id":12284,"date":"2020-09-01T09:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T09:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=12284"},"modified":"2023-07-14T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2023-07-14T10:24:05","slug":"show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hant\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Show and Tell: Cao Yu\u2019s Gendered Embodiment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Luise Guest <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A naked female torso is half obscured by shadow. We cannot see her face. As her hands rhythmically squeeze her pale breasts, jets of milk shoot into the air. \u2018Fountain\u2019 (2015), a video first exhibited at her graduation show in 2016, brought young artist Cao Yu instant notoriety. Viewers reacted viscerally \u2013 some with outrage and disgust, some with anger, some with fascination and delight, and some with bewilderment. Was it pornography? Was it a joke? Was it a feminist statement about motherhood? Reactions to this work, including an attempt by authorities to remove it from the exhibition, reveal so much about how women\u2019s bodies and their sexuality are perceived. Cao Yu\u2019s transgressive work issued a defiant challenge to ingrained cultural taboos, that is for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minimalist, conceptual, and deliberately provocative, Cao\u2019s work reflects upon and exploits the physicality of her materials, from the conventional \u2013 marble, stretched linen and canvas \u2013 to unexpected, even transgressive, substances including the artist\u2019s own hair, breastmilk and urine, and their various significations. Cao graduated from the academically rigorous Sculpture Department of Beijing\u2019s Central Academy of Fine Arts and cites Sui Jianguo and Zhan Wang as influential teachers and mentors. In a recent interview Cao Yu said it was Zhan Wang, whose own work is deeply conceptual and uncompromising in its refined physicality (1), who encouraged her to realise her potential when she began postgraduate study.(2)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cao<\/a>
Cao Yu, Fountain, 2015
Single channel HD video (colour, silence)
11\u201910\u2033, edition of 10 + 2 AP.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Font of Wisdom<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Despite dramatic lighting that creates a Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, \u2018Fountain\u2019 is no art historical Madonna. It is real and a bit disturbing. For me, it evokes memories of breastfeeding two babies, of painfully engorged, inflamed or leaking breasts. Lactation makes people uneasy. Bizarrely, it often evokes disgust. Even today, breastfeeding women in public are required to cover themselves discreetly with precarious arrangements of shawls, and are often pressured to remove themselves completely from the public gaze. Cao Yu\u2019s video bravely defies such patriarchal, squeamish nonsense, forcing us to watch her female body doing its thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the title refers to Marcel Duchamp\u2019s notorious challenge to the art establishment in 1917. \u2018Fountain\u2019, a porcelain urinal turned on its side, is a sly reference to gendered sexualities, a hand grenade thrown into art history and over a century later it is still the subject of contested interpretations. Cao Yu also references Bruce Nauman\u2019s \u2018Self-Portrait as a Fountain\u2019 (1966\u20131967), in which he spits out an arc of water (with obvious ejaculatory symbolism). Cao\u2019s breastmilk fountain satirises the phallic subtexts of both works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cao Yu\u2019s uncompromising chutzpah in confronting the masculinist history of modern and contemporary sculpture and performance art \u2013 so much testosterone! \u2013 echoes the similarly audacious work of a Chinese performance and transdisciplinary artist of the previous generation. In 2001, He Chengyao removed her shirt to stride bare breasted along the Great Wall. It was, she says, an impromptu performance during the public exhibition of German artist H. A. Schult\u2019s installation of life-sized figures constructed of consumer waste.(3) When the semi-naked He Chengyao suddenly appeared in the midst of the crowd, attention was immediately diverted towards her. Because her spontaneous action was so public, and because it took place at this site \u2013 a potent symbol of Chinese nationhood \u2013 the considerable media attention was mostly negative.(4) She was accused of being an immoral attention-seeker, a judgement rooted in a misogynist view of \u2018good womanhood\u2019 that has not noticeably abated in the twenty years since. Some years ago, reflecting on her motivation for this transgressive action, He Chengyao told me, \u201cFaced with all this hostility I tried to figure out the reason behind my performance. It was as if I was being controlled by a supernatural power of some kind. I decided to look inside for answers instead of outside.\u201d(5)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sense of looking \u2018inside\u2019, feeling an uncontrollable imperative to use her body as a means of artistic expression, is familiar to Cao Yu, too. Cao gave birth to her first child in 2014. Childbirth and motherhood changed her view of her own body and herself; a visceral female physicality found its way into her work. \u2018Fountain\u2019, Cao says, was a work that she had<\/em> to make. After her child was born, for the duration of her lactation, she had frequent bouts of mastitis that caused high fevers and almost unbearable pain:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it caused me pain, it also brought nutrition and life energy to my child, so my milk became this wonder substance that I [both] loved and hated. So, in the process of fighting this pain, I was sensitively aware that my body at this moment was full of endless life energy and explosive force. I felt for the first time as a woman that my body could have an even more violent power to release tension than a man\u2019s. And [if] my body was gradually turning into a masculine fountain monument, then it [also] became a container for life-giving and spraying milk. The white milk was imbued with the memory of love and hate.<\/em>(6)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cao Yu standing between two of her \u2018Venus\u2019 works, in her studio, Beijing, 2017. (photo Hu Qingyan)\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The video is shot from the point of view of the artist as she gazes down at her own body, experiencing its power. Undoubtedly there is an erotic charge in the work \u2013 certainly the physical closeness of breastfeeding an infant can be intensely pleasurable as well as sometimes extremely painful. But in a contemporary culture in which the breast is commodified as an erotic object, and sexuality and motherhood are often seen as incompatible, \u2018Fountain\u2019 issues a challenge to the pornographic gaze that reinforces this binary. Cao Yu wanted all attention to be focused on the jets of liquid shooting into the air and the power of her body to expel it with great force. The milk fell into her eyes, almost blinding her. Cao carefully directed the lighting, camera angle and the positioning of her body:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We chose to shoot this video with the brightest light exposure possible, which created a clear contrast between the white milk and the dark background. The details of the breasts were gone, instead, it showed a beautiful landscape of two active volcanoes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cao was in so much pain from her engorged breasts by the time the video was shot that she felt they would explode. She experienced exquisite relief as she began pumping, until the last drops of milk were gone. Tension and release, and that strange mixture of joy and sorrow familiar to all new parents, are communicated so powerfully in this work. Cao Yu knew that \u2018Fountain\u2019 would evoke strong reactions (undoubtedly, at least in part, her intention) but her video is not merely subversive, it is also aesthetically beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such candid representations of motherhood are rare. We are more accustomed to saccharine depictions of selfless maternal sacrifice, or airbrushed, Instagram-perfect imagery that belies the bloody reality of childbirth, the delirious exhaustion and pain of new motherhood and lactation, or the endless, repetitive labour of raising a child. It is no surprise that the work excited controversy when it was exhibited \u2013 indeed, Cao Yu says she suddenly knew what it was like to be an overnight sensation. Some members of the art academy\u2019s administration tried to prevent the work being shown at all, declaring it to be pornographic. Her name was abruptly withdrawn from an awards list. Members of her family were embarrassed. Audience reaction was mixed, and she was attacked online, in terms reminiscent of those used to attack He Chengyao almost twenty years earlier. Cao described the scene:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the museum, someone was whispering in front of the work, someone called friends to come back and watch it again and again, some people were pointing fingers with bad intentions, there was also someone bursting into tears during the viewing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wondered whether the references to Duchamp, Nauman, and the problematically masculinist narratives of art history were at the forefront of Cao Yu\u2019s mind as she planned this work, or whether they had revealed themselves only once she saw the video. In response, Cao quoted the Chinese idiom \u2018to paint a dragon and dot the eyes\u2019 (hu\u00e0 l\u00f3ng di\u01cen j\u012bng<\/em> \u753b\u9f99\u70b9\u775b) meaning \u2018to add the final finishing touch\u2019 to something. From the moment she decided to make the work, Cao realised that she was entering a dialogue with art history, not just with Duchamp and Nauman, but also with earlier works such as Ingres\u2019 \u2018La Source\u2019 (1856), a neo-Classical painting depicting an idealised nude woman holding an urn spilling water balanced on her shoulder. The Chinese title of Cao\u2019s video \u2018\u6cc9\u2019 may be translated as \u2018Fountain\u2019 but also refers to a spring or source of water. She says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These classics have one thing in common, namely, they all came from the interpretation of \u2018Fountain\u2019 by the great male artists in art history. Therefore, the video work Fountain, created using new media, and from the perspective of a female artist from a younger generation, launched a new understanding and interpretation of the classic works in history, which was a leap forward, and that really excited me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cao<\/a>
Cao Yu, Artist Manufacturing, 2016, Breastmilk (the artist\u2019s), dimensions variable.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Formation<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Fountain\u2019 transformed the milk produced by Cao Yu\u2019s body into an art material. \u2018Artist Manufacturing\u2019 (2016) makes this intention even more explicit. Cao condensed eighteen litres of her breast milk into a malleable, clay-like material, and used it to mould abstract forms. Unmediated by the distancing of video camera and screen, they bear the marks of the artist\u2019s kneading fingers and are redolent of sour milk. Described by Rachel Rits-Volloch as an \u2018extrusion of her own bodily fluids, an inversion of herself from inside to outside, signed with her own fingerprints\u2019(7), Cao has made the product of her own body into art. This is not unprecedented; in 1961 Piero Manzoni filled 90 cans with his own faeces. Each was numbered and labelled in Italian, English, French and German, identifying the contents as \u2018\u201dArtist\u2019s Shit\u201d, contents 30gr net freshly preserved, produced and tinned in May 1961\u2019.(8) Thus, in a neat comment about the aesthetic judgement and intellectual acuity of the artworld, the product of the artist\u2019s body became a commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cao Yu\u2019s work is quite different, however, and arguably more interesting.\u00a0Although she says, very emphatically,\u00a0that she is not a feminist,(9) \u2018Fountain\u2019 and \u2018Artist Manufacturing\u2019 align more readily with works by feminist artists who challenged taboos around menstruation, pregnancy and birth and\u00a0refused to hide the realities of the female body \u2013 its inconvenient leakiness, as well as its sexual and maternal power.\u00a0Carolee Schneeman\u2019s 1975 \u2018Interior Scroll\u2019, a performance in which she drew a long, narrow scroll of paper from her vagina and read aloud from it comes to mind.(10) So, too, do the performance works of Patty Chang, such as\u2018Melons\u2019 (1998) in which she wears a large bra with the cups filled with cantaloupes that resemble prosthetic breasts. Chang slices through bra and melons with a sharp knife and scoops out the flesh with her hand, enacting an imaginary ritual at the death of her aunt from breast cancer. Chang also used her own breastmilk in \u2018Letdown (Milk)\u2019 (2017), photographs of the discarded milk she had expressed into cups and any other available receptacles as she documented an arduous journey through Uzbekistan. The double meaning of her title references both the physical sensation when milk begins to flow, prompted by the sucking of the infant on the nipple, and an emotional state of disappointment.(11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cao Yu, The Labourer, 2017
Single channel HD video (colour, silent), 9\u2032
edition of 6 + 2 AP.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like Chang\u2019s, Cao Yu\u2019s work explores the push and pull of apparent binaries: private and public, beauty and revulsion, tension and release, pleasure and pain, doubt and certainty. Socially constructed binaries also interest her; much of her work challenges gendered cultural expectations. \u2018The Labourer\u2019 (2017), for example, a video once again shot with dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, shows only a pair of pale legs standing on a pile of white flour. It takes a moment to realise that the yellowish liquid flowing down her legs to moisten the flour, which she kneads into dough with her feet, is the artist\u2019s urine. This nonsensical, improbable \u2018labour\u2019 produces nothing at all. \u2018The Labourer\u2019 might be read as a satire on the making of art in a world that sees little value in the activity. However, Cao Yu\u2019s intention was to confound orthodoxies of femininity by representing herself urinating while standing. The juxtaposition of aesthetic beauty \u2013 her gleaming legs emerging from the darkness and merging with the whiteness of the flour \u2013 with the absurdity of her actions prompts us to examine our deepest responses, whether of fascination or disgust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cao<\/a>
Cao Yu, Femme Fatale 1, 2019, c-print, frame 250 x 140 cm, edition of 2 + 1 AP.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Exhibition view, \u2018Femme Fatale\u2019, Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne, Switzerland, 17.4.19 \u2013 25.5.19
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This theme was further emphasised in Cao\u2019s two solo exhibitions, \u2018I Have an Hourglass Waist\u2019 at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing (2017) and \u2018Femme Fatale\u2019 at Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne (2019). She approached each exhibition as a spatial and temporal installation, deliberating every aspect of how visitors would encounter her work. The aim was to unsettle and surprise. The opening salvo in this campaign began at the entrance of the gallery. For both exhibitions, the door handle was covered with Vaseline \u2013 a performative, experiential \u2018work\u2019 entitled \u2018Perplexing Romance\u2019 (2019) which included a gallery attendant stationed ready with a stack of tissues bearing the artist\u2019s signature. The disconcerting stickiness of opening the door presaged further discomfiting experiences inside. In the washrooms, a soundscape entitled \u2018The Flesh Flavour\u2019 (2017) amplified noises of chewing, sexual intercourse and ambiguous clapping or smacking into different parts of the room. On the gallery floor, filling the entryway between two rooms, so that visitors had no choice but to walk on it, an undulating textile installation turned out upon closer inspection to be a pile of black bras stitched together to form a surreal groundcover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large-scale photographs from which the title of the Lucerne exhibition was derived amplify Cao\u2019s challenge to gendered expectations. Three life-sized photographs of men are hung in elaborately carved, gold Baroque frames reminiscent of those surrounding grandiose royal portraits. But the subjects of these works are far from aristocratic; they are ordinary men caught in the act of public urination. One is a corporate power-player peeing beside a plane, one a white-collar worker silhouetted against city buildings at dusk, while the third, a thuggish character in a red jacket, seems to have just realised that his antisocial act has been caught on camera. The artist lay in wait to photograph these unsuspecting men. It raises questions \u2013 is this an invasion of their privacy? Can it be, when they are engaged in such exhibitionism? Cao Yu says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures I captured were not the royalty or nobles we often see in classical oil paintings; they were ordinary people from our lives [\u2026] they are the men we see every day who are peeing in different geographical settings. Ironically, some of them presented the same proud temperament as those of the emperors and nobles in classical oil paintings. They regard themselves as superior and like to be looked up to by others even when they are peeing. Some of them used a way of swearing or silent acquiescence to protect themselves and then fled quickly. Without exception they were swallowed up by these luxury frames with a golden glow. And they were stuck in these external frames forever, awkwardly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Cao Yu the \u2018femme fatale\u2019 of the title? Certainly, with these unflattering images she removes any power these men might possess, rendering them as vulnerable and absurd creatures. Their final presence in the gallery is the result of some intense negotiating after the fact between each man and the artist (who reveals that she was protected from their anger by a few \u2018uniformed bodyguards\u2019). We can assume there were other instances where the negotiations were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self Portrait<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Cao\u2019s preoccupation with the body and its functions, and her interest in creating provocations that rupture gendered expectations and boundaries, she examines the nature of the artist and the materiality of artistic practice. At its most literal, she presents her official identity card as a deadpan self-portrait, blown up to a monstrous scale more than two meters wide, entitled \u2018The Female Artist\u2019(2017). The artist\u2019s labour is revealed in the \u2018Canvas\u2019 series (2013 \u2013 ongoing) in which Cao laboriously traces the lines made by the warp and weft of the canvas with a marker pen. The resulting works appear delicate and ethereal, yet they are also an acknowledgement of the tactile nature of the fabric and the exacting physical work of their production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, in the \u2018Mother\u2019 series white canvases are slashed to create openings that have been roughly sutured. The unprimed raw linen of the reverse has been pulled through these partly stitched slits from the back to the front and turned inside out. In \u2018Mother No. 4\u2019(2016) a plait of raw canvas hangs down like an umbilical cord. Again, Cao Yu creates a dialogue with art history while making work that is rooted in her own experiences. Referencing the \u2018Cut\u2019 paintings made by Lucio Fontana between 1958 and 1968 (12), the \u2018Mother\u2019 series symbolises the agonising passage of the child from the womb, that extraordinary moment when the infant\u2019s head crowns and what has been internal becomes external. Like Fontana\u2019s, Cao\u2019s works blur distinctions between two and three dimensions, between destruction and creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cao Yu, I Have, 2017
Single channel video (colour, sound) 3\u2032
edition of 6 + 2 AP.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I Have\u2019(2017), a video shown in both solo exhibitions, is perhaps the most subversive of Cao Yu\u2019s works to date. The artist\u2019s head and shoulders are brightly lit against her characteristic dark background. Gazing at the camera she begins to speak, as if directly to the viewer: \u2018I have an envy-inducing figure\u2026 I have an hourglass waist\u2026 I have a husband who dotes on me\u2026 I have a ten-carat diamond ring\u2026\u2019 This boastful narration moves from the artist\u2019s appearance, her enviable marriage and her child-prodigy son to some specifically Chinese aspirations: \u2018I have a car with Beijing plates \u2026 I have a Beijing hukou.\u2019 Then we arrive at the real point of the work: \u2018I have an art history calibre work\u2026 I will be one of China\u2019s most representative artists\u2026 I have everything an artist has or could ever want\u2026\u2019 It\u00a0is unnerving to hear a woman bragging so shamelessly, although today we see this reclamation of (often sexual) empowerment from female hip hop stars such as Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. It contradicts everything that women are taught to be \u2013 or at least to\u00a0seem\u00a0<\/em>to be. Cao has described her boasting as an act of \u2018self-consolation\u2019.(13)\u00a0I Have<\/em>\u00a0is perhaps a form of \u2018whistling in the dark\u2019 to keep the monsters of self-doubt and fear away, but it is also a refusal to perform false modesty. Cao dislikes how people\u00a0seek out weakness in others, how feeling pity serves\u00a0\u2018to protect their fragile glass\u00a0hearts.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cao Yu, The World is Like This for Now (detail), 2017, single long hair (the artist\u2019s), marble, two pieces, 89 x 61 x 38 and 74 x 50 x 33 cm.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Each work in Cao Yu\u2019s impressively coherent oeuvre reveals a little more about her ideas and intentions, like the sequencing of a narrative. The World is Like This for Now<\/em> (2017) consists of a single strand of the artist\u2019s hair (a material used in a number of works) that connects two roughly hewn blocks of marble. The tensile strength of a single hair is said to be stronger than steel, but it seems so fragile compared to solid stone. Does this paradox of apparent frailty and actual strength represent Cao Yu herself, a young female artist navigating the global art ecology? Cao agreed, citing \u2018The Journey to the West\u2019 in her response:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A single hair is the most vulnerable material of the human body. It is so tiny that it is barely visible, so much so, that it is even hard to be found in the exhibition hall. But this lonely long hair will swing slightly with viewers\u2019 breaths when they are close to it. It appears free, but it is just like the Monkey King being pressed under the foot of Wuxing mountain by Buddha Tathagata […] The hard and cold stone is just what we face during the oppression and suffering around us at all times! But without them, there would be no manifestation of us. This is a temporary balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u2018temporary balance\u2019\u2013 uncomfortable and unstable yet also exciting \u2013 is precisely what underpins Cao Yu\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Cao Yu, 90\u00b0C IV, 2019, marble, silk stocking,
56 x 46 x 36 cm.
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Urs Meile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About the artist<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Cao Yu \u66f9\u96e8<\/strong>(b.1988, Liaoning) studied in the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, graduating with a BFA in 2011 and an MFA in 2016. Since graduation her work has been shown in China, Korea, the United States, Australia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Solo exhibitions include \u2018I Have an Hourglass Waist\u2019, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing (2017) and \u2018Femme Fatale\u2019, Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne, Switzerland (2019). Awards include Best Young Artist of the Year\u00b7The 12th AAC Award of Art China (2018); named China Art Power100 (2018) and shortlisted for the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA);  Nomination, the French Opline Prize(2019) ; Nomination, French Yishu 8\u00b7 Chinese Young Artist Award(2017). Cao Yu was also selected into Gen. T China\u2019s Top 100 New Pioneer (2020). Cao Yu lives and works in Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

1. Zhan Wang, perhaps best known for his polished steel \u2018scholar rocks\u2019, is represented by Long March Space in Beijing. See the gallery website for examples of his work, a biography and other information. Available at http:\/\/www.longmarchspace.com\/artists\/zhan-wang-2\/<\/a> [accessed 26.6.20]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The author interviewed Cao Yu via WeChat and email over a period of several weeks in May and June 2020. Cao Yu responded in both English and Chinese. All quotes from the artist are excerpted from this interview unless otherwise acknowledged. They have been lightly edited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Discussed in He Chengyao\u2019s interview with the author, conducted in Beijing in December 2014, and subsequently included in \u2018Half the Sky: Conversations with Women Artists in China\u2019. Piper Press, Sydney (2016)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. See Sasha Su-Ling Welland\u2019s account of these events in \u2018Opening the Great Wall\u2019 in \u2018Pain in Soul: Performance Art and Video Works by He Chengyao\u2019<\/em>, transl. Mao Weidong. Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art p.59 (2007)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Excerpted from He Chengyao\u2019s interview with the author, conducted in Beijing in December 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. All quotes from Cao Yu are excerpted from her interview with the author unless otherwise acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Rachel Rits-Volloch, in her essay \u2018Portrait of the Artist with an Hourglass Waist\u2019 for the exhibition \u2018I Have an Hourglass Waist\u2019 at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, 4.11.2017 \u2013 23.2.2018<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. See the Tate information about this work, available at
https:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/art\/artworks\/manzoni-artists-shit-t07667<\/a> [accessed 17.6.2020]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. There is an interesting history of the fluxing embrace and disavowal of Euro-American feminist theory in post-Mao China. And, of course, China has its own distinct, long feminist history dating to the late Qing and Republican periods. The work of scholar Min Dongchao reveals all the pitfalls and slippages of meaning as feminist theory was translated into Chinese in the late twentieth century. In terms of feminist art, the recent work of Julia Andrews, Peggy Wang, Phyllis Teo, Shuqin Cui, Monica Merlin and Sasha Su-Ling Welland addresses the ambivalence so often expressed by artists. Shuqin Cui argues that, despite the pioneering work of feminist critics and curators such as Liao Wen and Xu Hong, \u2018Few Chinese women artists would welcome the label of feminist art or categorize their work as feminist art even if the feminist dimensions of their work were clearly evident.\u2019 See, for example, Shuqin Cui, 2020. Introduction: Why (En)gender Women\u2019s Art?. positions asia critique, <\/em>28(1), pp. 1-18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10.See the Tate information about this work, available at
https:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/art\/artworks\/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282<\/a> [accessed 17.6.2020]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11. See Patty Chang\u2019s website for more information about Letdown (Milk)<\/em> and other works. Available at
http:\/\/www.pattychang.com\/#\/letdown-milk\/<\/a> [accessed 24.6.20]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12.. Tate information about Fontana\u2019s \u2018Cut\u2019 works, available at https:\/\/www.tate.org.uk\/art\/artworks\/fontana-spatial-concept-waiting-t00694<\/a> [accessed 25.6.20]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

13. See \u2018Cao Yu: In the Name of the Body. Interview conducted between Tan Ying (London) and Cao Yu (Beijing) in November, 2017\u2019 available at
https:\/\/www.galerieursmeile.com\/application\/files\/8115\/6353\/6472\/CY_Interview_2017_E.pdf<\/a> [accessed 26.6.20]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cao Yu \u2013 The Labourer 2017 excerpt<\/a> from Galerie Urs Meile<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Luise Guest  A naked female tors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[869,67,8956,8957,176,8959,8958,8960,798,8961,8962,8963,29,374,143,38,8964,8965,8966,8967,8968,230,2567],"yoast_head":"\nShow and Tell: Cao Yu\u2019s Gendered Embodiment - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_TW\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Show and Tell: Cao Yu\u2019s Gendered Embodiment - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Luise Guest  A naked female tors … Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-01T09:56:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-07-14T10:24:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2023\/07\/be1ba590-275d-45ef-bf32-a740c559df9c_1300_730.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"730\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"\u9810\u4f30\u95b1\u8b80\u6642\u9593\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"21 \u5206\u9418\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lien\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#\/schema\/person\/52a3fdee246825a3356b50e0c44bbeeb\"},\"headline\":\"Show and Tell: Cao Yu\u2019s Gendered Embodiment\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-01T09:56:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-07-14T10:24:05+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\"},\"wordCount\":4215,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"2020\",\"artist\",\"Cao Yu\",\"Carolee Schneeman\",\"Chinese contemporary art\",\"feminist\",\"fountain\",\"He Chengyao\",\"Luise Guest\",\"Patty Chang\",\"Piero Manzoni\",\"Rachel Rits-Volloch\",\"Ran Dian\",\"randian\",\"Urs Meile\",\"\u4e2d\u56fd\u5f53\u4ee3\u827a\u672f\",\"\u4e4c\u65af\u2022\u9ea6\u52d2\",\"\u4f55\u6210\u7476\",\"\u5973\u6027\u4e3b\u4e49\",\"\u66f9\u96e8\",\"\u6cc9\",\"\u827a\u672f\u5bb6\",\"\u9ea6\u52d2\u753b\u5eca\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Features\"],\"inLanguage\":\"zh-TW\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/show-and-tell-cao-yus-gendered-embodiment\/\",\"name\":\"Show and Tell: Cao Yu\u2019s Gendered Embodiment - 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