OCAD University Open Research Repository

The Counterfeit Outsider: Qigong Drawing, Peasant Woman, and Modernism of Chinese Contemporary Art

Zhang, Wei (2022) The Counterfeit Outsider: Qigong Drawing, Peasant Woman, and Modernism of Chinese Contemporary Art. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Zhang, Wei
Abstract:

After being professionalized by the Long March Project in 2002, former rural factory worker Guo Fengyi (1942-2010) began to become the renowned mysterious peasant woman artist as soon as questions about her artist identity had been raised. There are many ways to discuss her relationship to the elite praxis of Chinese contemporary art, yet existing conversations hardly elicit the study of her and her art; instead, it charges at the elite center of the Chinese art world, arbitrarily places her drawings in many different elite-designated curations and problematized her existence by classifying as an outsider for their own need. Addressing the problems, this paper seeks to re-examine Guo’s outsider position in the Chinese art world in three contexts. First, Guo’s visual form in comparison to the socialist visual culture and contemporary art practice in the post-socialist period; second, the self-authorization in her drawing that faces the intersection of feminism discourse and modernization; third, the subjugation of her as part of the normalized “peasant participants-urban art personnel” collaboration in the Chinese art world. By examining these overlooked contexts that are associated with Guo’s drawings, this project confronts the role of an outsider, explores the potential of the understudied heterogenous female in Chinese contemporary art, and hopes to give light to plights that not only Guo Fengyi but also many heterogenous others are facing in an era of internationalization.

Date: September 2022
Uncontrolled Keywords: contemporary Chinese art, post-colonialism, feminism, Guo Fengyi, qigong painting, modernism movement, urban-rural relation
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories
Date Deposited: 27 Sep 2022 18:29
Last Modified: 27 Sep 2022 18:29
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3946

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