Who is Hung Liu?
Painting, Mixed media, Installation
Born: Changchun, People's Republic, China
1948-2021
Hung Liu is known for her paintings that give a voice to those that history and the prevailing powers have overlooked or trampled upon. These paintings humanize and dignify the oppressed with grace and authority. Hung Liu’s inspiring story will encourage and provoke audiences, challenging their way of seeing others and inspiring their own creative work.
As described by Philip Tinari, her biography unfolds against circumstances of consequence, toggling among grand narratives. These formative historical and cultural events, now outside of the peripheral vision of those who did not live through them, fade into history and do not impart their lessons to the next generation. The film about Hung Liu, the grand narratives that her life intersected and that her artistic practice examines, will provide the opportunity to realize cultural exchanges that have gone unmade.
Her life example and body of work make up the emotional core of the flagship episode for The Artist Documentary Series, setting the tone for future episodes and the artists that will be invited to participate.
What's next for Hung Liu’s ART?
Hung Liu prepared for two museum exhibits and three gallery solo exhibitions in 2021 alone. The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum is currently featuring a six-decade retrospective on Hung Liu’s career from present to end of May 2022. She exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco over the course of the Summer, before her untimely passing three weeks later, and one week before The Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fé hosted an exhibit of her work.
A documentary on Hung Liu’s life will contribute to this momentous and imminent moment - aligning with the art world’s recognition of her important work.
Creative Practice
Hung Liu’s paintings are recognizable for her use of broad brush strokes and the use of linseed oil in a process that became her distinctive style. Although many of her works draw from her own photographs and experiences, her work references historical imagery, especially archival photographs from her native China, and more recently she derived images of her second, adopted homeland of America. For her most recent subjects, Hung Liu dove into the repository of Dorothea Lange’s historical photographs of the American Dust Bowl, archived in her home town of Oakland, CA. Although paintings from American archives may have seemed as a departure from the themes she painted from the Chinese archives, it made perfect sense that as she considered her own story of immigration and acceptance in America, that she would choose to also give new interpretation to images from the archives of American history.
A Brief History
Growing up during China's cultural revolution during the Maoist regime, Hung Liu worked among the rice, wheat and corn fields seven days a week as a part of the regime’s “reeducation” program. She began to photograph, paint and portray her surroundings and the community around her.
After four years, she was able to continue her art education in Beijing, and after several years of waiting for a passport, Hung Liu was finally able to immigrate to California where she was able to further her education. She continued painting, and has become recognized as one of America’s most important Chinese artists. Her subject matter are overlooked members of Chinese society, providing them with a place to be seen—on her canvas, in the intended human dignity and glory.
