Hung Liu grew up in China and came of age during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She spent four years in the countryside as a laborer, studied painting at the Central Academy of Art and in 1984, received permission to attend the University of California-San Diego where she earned an M.F.A.
Using anonymous historical photographs as the subject matter of her paintings and prints, Liu reconstructs an unknown story. She embellishes the surfaces with lovely drawings of insects, flowers and birds, painterly drips and collage elements that create veils of time and meaning over her subjects.
“Everything is relative. My work is not timeless. It is not universal, as if anywhere you take art it will always be the same. Rather it is already broken down, with different cultural styles. There is a lot of middle ground and ambiguity, especially when I use historical photographs.”
-Hung Liu
The exhibition was on display January 21, 2005 – February 27, 2005.
MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rena Bransten Gallery
Selected Bibliography on Hung Liu
Compiled by Jodi Kovach, 2003
BOOKS
Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military
Sangmie Choi Schellstede, et al.
Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report
Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
See also the film: Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (1999) by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives
Cynthia Enloe
Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security
J. Ann Tickner
Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II
Yoshiaki Yoshimi
WEBSITES
Comfort-Women.org
Chunghee Sarah Soh
Associate Professor of Anthropology, San Francisco State University
ARTICLE
Women and the U.S. Military in East Asia
Gwyn Kirk