The F-Word: Female Art in Ambivalent Times
Samantha Culp
Courtesy of the artist
When asked if she is a feminist, Hong Kong painter Au Hoi Lam replies with a prompt "No," and explains that she would rather not "advertise" herself as a woman or a man. Her answer is characteristic of most young female artists today, who want their art to speak for itself without the weight of gender politics. But for those who still think gender is an important issue in the art-world, a dilemma emerges: how to start a discussion of feminism and art if no one wants to talk about it? A recent all-female exhibition at Cattle Depot in Hong Kong attempts to engage this problem, by simultaneously being and not being a feminist art show.
Two galleries and one lecture theatre played host to the ambitious project, which has no over-arching English title but is represented by the two Chinese characters for "woman" and "traveler" (both are pronounced the same in Cantonese). Female Hong Kong artists presented seminars on feminism and art theory alongside displays of several works–though none of the artists, not even the curator herself, identify themselves as feminists.
Ivy Ma, who organized the entire show with the support of a Hong Kong Arts Development Council grant, says she’s always been interested in female artists, and wanted to create a different type of forum for Hong Kong women artists than those that have come before. "In the previous shows, I observe that they always emphasize woman’s ‘femininity,’ but only what we already understand as ‘femininity,’" Ma says. "Talking about periods, talking about pregnancy." The last all-female show of Hong Kong artists (held on Macau in 2001), in which Ma participated as an artist, continued this focus on the female body, and she decided in her own curation to try a less-obvious approach to displaying women’s art. The eight artists she selected are not the typical choices for "women’s art" shows in Hong Kong–"it’s quite my intention, actually," she laughs.
Split between two display spaces, the artists cover a wide range of style, medium, and even generation. In Artist Commune’s branch of the exhibition, entitled "Schema: a traveler’s approach," Ma gathered four young women working in paint or textile that share a common theme of repeated motifs or intricate patterns. Zoe Shek Ming-Wai’s large gray canvases balance delicacy with an edge of aggression in their beautifully looping spray-painted lines (reminiscent of Eliot Pucket by way of graffiti) and tiny blue star outlines. Stella Tang Ying-Chi’s "Hanging Veil" is a set of deliciously jewel-toned hung fabric works, exquisitely webbed and knotted together by dense bright threads with the occasional surprising clean-edged opening (and button to close it). Carol Lee Mei-kuen sends spirals of painstakingly-singed paper bouncing across her cream canvases, occasionally revealing the burnt shades of English and Chinese newsprint, or else the hypnotic effect of white paper snowflakes made with fire. Au Hoi Lam’s newest paintings step away from her previous, solely abstract works–"She is Asleep I, II, III" evoke Hong Kong’s trademark skyscrapers with their boxy, misty fields overlaid with grids, and obsessive markings trying to escape their own matrices. Focusing on the rich history of women’s crafts and "domestic arts" was an early concern of feminist art history, but Ma does not wish to place so easy a reading on these artists’ works. Of her own pieces, Au does acknowledge that being a woman may affect the way she works. "I think my painting always represents some personal story, like a diary…I feel more women will think in this way, they will focus on very little things, like tracing their memories," she says, and notes that male artists don’t typically share this approach.
In 1a Space, "If Hong Kong, a Woman/Traveler" continues using the theoretical frame of a traveler’s identity ("because the traveler identity is very flexible," according to the curator), but makes the connection to the female experience much more emotional. The only contribution that might be deemed "body art" in the entire show is a set of artifacts in the first foyer from a 2001 performance by Pauline Lam Yuk-Lin–a set of plastic pockets attached to the wall, some filled with rice, others dramatically dripping what looks like blood onto the floor. A mask made of tape and rice hangs beside it, and a small video screen set into the wall shows the artist smearing glue on her face and then pouring rice down onto it. In the next compartment, Lam Wai Kit’s video series "On the Phone" depicts the lower half of the artists’ face, apparently on a slow-motion cell-phone call, overlaid with images of water, fish, and city crowds. The third partition (which the viewer must literally climb into, around a wall) houses the photo series "Indefinite Portraiture and the Betweens" by Amy Cheung Wan-Man; several large square color portraits of women in their workplaces–with their back to the camera. What seems like a cliché idea is actually effective in execution, as airline hostesses, butchers, and businesswomen pause in their labor, poised amid their delightfully chaotic surroundings, and show us only the backs of their heads. In the middle of this room, a large black rubber ball hangs from the ceiling, speaking self-referential phrases in Cantonese (example "Black ball"), and forms a nice companion piece to the tension-filled unseen presence of all the portraits’ figures.
It is the last chamber, however, where the exhibit finds its heart. Projected simply against the wall, Leung Mee-Ping gives us "Yip Hoi," a fourteen-minute-long look into the last weeks of her grandmother’s life, edited together from home movies and photographs. The non-linear cinema verité style of this short documentary is disarming and unexpectedly moving–afternoons on the balcony at her grandmother’s rest home, a last birthday party where the woman looks tired and confused, relatives sorting through her belongings after her passing. Leung says she wanted to know something more about her grandmother’s life, her grandmother’s journey from hard times in Mainland China to old age in Hong Kong, and the hundred-plus grandchildren in between. The elegiac tribute to this one ordinary woman and the end of her life is personal and universal, political and transcendent in the ways that feminist art helped clear a path for many decades ago. Leung describes her consciousness as "post-feminist" in that her creativity drives her "to understand human being under various situations; to care about female means to care about another half of human being."
