Thesis
The Three Inch Prison
“Footbinding usually began when girls were between 4 and 6 years old; some were as young as 3. Mothers, grandmothers, or older female relatives first bound the girl’s feet. The ultimate goal was to make them 3 inches long, the ideal golden lotus foot…”
Thesis
Essay
My work focuses on the injustices toward women in China and seeks to raise awareness to promote change. Under my “beautiful surfaces” lie brutal social constrictions and cruel reality. My storytelling portrays the collective experience of women in Chinese history, and how I perceive the hidden threads of this injustice in other forms of social attitudes today.
In the summer of 2021, I was visiting China and a stranger commented on how shoes look prettier on women, because they have small feet. He used the Chinese phrase associated with this barbaric practice, “golden lotus foot”. It struck me that, even though the practice has been outlawed, the idea still lives on. In China, information about this subject was scarce, due to censorship. Only when I returned to the US, was I able to conduct more research.
“The feet were massaged and oiled before all the toes, except the big toes, weren’t broken and bound flat against the sole, making a triangle shape.”
This ancient practice was torturously painful and crippling. In order to meet the standard of beauty and attract a “good marriage”, girls were forced to bind their feet. The bound feet severely limited their mobility. They were forced to stay at home, sit for long hours and be occupied with domestic chores.
Though the practice is abolished, social expectations for Chinese women continue to be based on staying at home, motherhood, and engaging in housework. “A good marriage” remains the ideal for Chinese girls as a path to a bright future. The current social norms in China still maintain echoes of the past. I mean to use my artwork to bring attention to these issues. Footbinding lives on, hidden, in other contexts.
Most of my print works incorporate silk, the same fabric used for bandaging in footbinding. I transform the silk, historically used to imprison women, to serve as the surface to testify about the past. The visual history manifests on the silk to tell the story of inflicted pain, infection and rot.
My major piece, “The Bride”, is an etching of a bride waiting for her groom to come. It is based on a painting of the same size. She sits with eyes closed, sitting upright in a formal, subservient manner. My work is focused on injustice towards women in China.
The theme that has been explored this year is on foot binding in China. My visual practice invites viewers to engage with my art and look deeper for the truth of each piece. In one of my mixed media prints, “The Homemaker”, the woman’s face is obscured but everything else is visible, showing the injustice of female isolation in China, where women were expected to stay home and not engage with the world. Theywere trapped at home because of their bound feet.
My colograph works utilize traditional Chinese fabric to achieve unique textures. This relates to my Chinese heritage and my interest in traditional Chinese clothing. The imprint of the fabric is a faithful record of its texture. Traditional Chinese clothing was worn by Han Chinese, the major ethnic group in China, over more than 4000 years of history. This style of clothing had been forgotten and abandoned for a long time. It is not until recent years that the Han Chinese people rediscovered and revived the traditional clothing as self-expression and a connection to their ancestral culture. The integration of Eastern and Western techniques are the gateway to my visual stories about women in China.
Line is a central aspect of printmaking, and also of Asian art. But my use of line is not the traditional Chinese way, in which every line is precise and clear. In my works, some of the lines dissolve into the background, and some are partially obscured, leaving only a ghostly hint. I chose etching because it is all about linework and texture, allowing me to capture fine details, similar to drawings, with precision that goes beyond drawing. This etching combined techniques of using soft ground and hard ground in order to achieve both textured areas and fine lines. Etching is one of the oldest forms of printmaking, but I’m not approaching it in a traditional way. I print on paper, but the final image is veiled by a sheet of semi-transparent silk. This forces the viewer to look harder, come closer, and even lift the “veil”, which I encourage. In this way, I hope to invite an interactive participation driven by curiosity. I choose not to draw the veil into the image, but make the viewer become the “bridegroom” who unveils the bride. The image is “invaded” by the viewer, just as the bridegroom “claims” the bride as his “property”.
This etching is based on one of my paintings, of the exact same size. Traditionally, artists typically make prints as smaller versions of their paintings. I choose to further break away from tradition by creating etchings the same size as my paintings, employing the grand presence of a larger painting to draw my audience’s attention to my work and to the injustices faced by women in China.
Additionally, the stand I’m using to hold the prints is based on the traditional Chinese clothes rack. My prints are made of a combination of paper and fabric, building a connection between the modern and the traditional experience.
I was born into a part of Chinese society that admired and emulated western culture. For years, I had turned away from my own culture and embraced others. A few years ago, I began to reclaim my culture through Chinese traditional clothing and it became essential to the narratives of Chinese history and traditions depicted in my work.
In my print work, I merge Eastern and Western techniques. My unorthodox approach towards etching is inspired by traditional Chinese clothing, Hanfu. The medium is Western, but employs Chinese silk. In the images, the texture of the clothing is faithfully captured by the use of soft ground for the first layer, and the next layer adds linework on top of these areas by drawing into the hard ground on the etching plate. The beauty of the clothing serves as an entry point for the viewers eyes and leads them into my story. I have created a wooden stand to exhibit the etchings, the shape of which is based on a traditional Chinese clothes rack. ‘The combination of Western and Eastern approaches represents my dual identity and experience of receiving a Western education, while preserving my Eastern identity.