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Crafting Modern China: the Revival of Yixing Pottery

Li, Chunmei (2013) Crafting Modern China: the Revival of Yixing Pottery. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Li, Chunmei
Abstract:

The revival of Chinese pottery tradition from Yixing (I-hsing) after the Chinese Cultural Revolution raises a series of questions on cultural production, history, and cultural identity in post-Mao China. The study of Yixing pottery reveals China’s transformation from a mode of production dominated by communist ideology and planned economy to a new era marked by a type of hybrid ideological and economic system. This essay argues that Yixing pottery is a politicized artifact, in which the politics of value and the politics of identity arise from the commodification and ideological appropriation of revitalized traditions. Yixing pottery is culturally informed; socially practiced; politically charged; and commercially contaminated. The contemporary cultural significance of Yixing pottery reveals an irony: the destruction of traditional culture in Mao’s red China is redefined by the reconstruction of socialist culture in China’s rise as a new world power.

Date: May 2013
Uncontrolled Keywords: Chinese pottery, Yixing (I-hsing), cultural production, post-Mao China, planned economy, politicized artifact, contemporary cultural significance
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories
Date Deposited: 17 Dec 2014 21:11
Last Modified: 21 Dec 2021 00:45
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/178

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