Almost all of my work refers to women--women at work, mothers and daughters, women tied together generationally. I had this old photograph from 1946 or 1948 of two sisters, the older carrying the younger on her back. And it made me think that that's a kind of woman's relationship, that we lean on each other, carrying each other, teaching each other. I think the image shows kinship; that's why I call it Sisters.

On the surface it's straightforward--two young girls, smiling. I don't know who they are or when or where the photograph was taken, so I have added other images, to give it more layers of meaning, to give them a story. The image is real, but there is a lot of abstraction in it. I used a wash to give a kind of movement in the background, one more layer of meaning, of time passing. Then I added details, many more layers. The Chinese calligraphy overlaying everything is from my son's exercise books when he was six or eight years old. In the Chinese system, student workbooks use a grid in which the characters are written. I think of them as a kind of boundary. On top of his writing, the teacher has made checkmarks and corrections. The writing is from children's stories, simple stories about tadpoles and a camel and little bees. Those are the kind of stories all cultures tell children. We think children are so close to nature, so that's the kind of stories we tell. And so I've also placed birds and insects in the image.

The calligraphy plate was printed last, and there's a little silver in the color. The silver and graphite printed on the dark black background show up against the children's hair like negative and positive. It's a kind of veil or screen on top, which pushes the image back physically and also back in time. The work becomes a memory.

--Hung Liu

 

Hung Liu's lithograph Sisters reminds us of the diverse populations that settled the West--including the hundreds of thousands of Asian immigrants who have shaped American society and culture. Born in Communist China, trained in a Beijing art school in a European mural tradition, immigrating to California in the 1980s, and gaining U.S. citizenship in 1991, Liu utilizes historical photographs and personal memories to express her multicultural identities: Chinese, Chinese American, Western American, American, female, and more.

Blending a 1940s photo of two young girls with a grid of Chinese calligraphy and small insets of birds, insects, and other characters, Liu's layered and painterly style exemplifies increasingly sophisticated understandings of the hybridic, or syncretic, nature of history and culture. Focusing especially on images of women and girls, Liu provides a new visual narrative of the West, one that recovers forgotten stories and peoples and generates new understandings of a multicultural--rather than monocultural--consciousness.

--Erika Doss

 



A PORTFOLIO of four limited edition prints is available for purchase.

The Women of the West Museum Expanded Visions Project involves four internationally renowned artists selected to work with master printer Bud Shark on a suite of original prints created exclusively for the museum.

The four artists include Emmi Whitehorse, Anita Rodriguez, Hung Liu, and Alison Saar. Offered in an elegant presentation case, the portfolio of four prints, in a limited edition of 75, is currently available at the price of $5,000.

Proceeds from this project will help support the museum's education programs.

Call the Women of the West Museum at 303-446-9378 for more information.

 

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