Hung Liu was born on February 17, 1948 in Changchun, China. Hung Liu is a Chinese painter who focuses on paintings based on historical Chinese photographs of prostitutes, refugees, street performers, laborers, prisoners, and many more. Incorporating the reflective process of painting, she uncovers the narratives and culture behind the people in her works. Contributing to the exploration of the history of China, viewers can see the culture of China through her paintings and manifest it in the present.

Hung Liu earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975 at the Beijing Teachers College. She then moved on to get a graduate degree in mural painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1981. Artistic freedom led her to study in the United States, leaving China in 1984 to study at UC San Diego. While her artistic training had a focus on the socialist realist tradition, she veered away from this tradition and focused on a fluid Western style separate from the strict rules that were implemented when she was a student in China.

Liu created Seven Poses to depict what women who were prostitutes were going through in prerevolutionary China. Liu incorporated the women into the paintings just as she included other motifs in the paintings, such as insects, birds, and flowers. Her paintings, which use calligraphic brush strokes and washes of colors, make her message stand out.

Many of Liu’s works were shown in a survey of her artwork via her exhibition Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu at the Oakland Museum of California. Exhibiting approximately eighty paintings and personal works, such as photographs and sketches, the exhibition highlights Liu’s accomplishments as an artist and the Chinese culture she proudly displays.

Haunts:

  • Oakland International Airport, 1 Airport Access Road, Oakland, CA 94621. Her art was displayed at various locations in Oakland, such as her mural that was spread out along a wall of windows in Terminal 2 at the Oakland International Airport depicting flying cranes. She received the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review Award for Going Away, Coming Home.

Going Away, Coming Home, 2006
Photo Courtesy: East Bay Times
Oakland International Airport

  • Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94613. One of the most important places that Liu hung out was Mills College, where she was an art professor. Throughout her career at Mills, she was given grants and awards for her art. Liu showcased her works at a companion exhibition to Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu at the Mills College Art Museum. Since retiring from Mills, she has spent a lot of her time working in her own studio in the Bay Area.

Photo Courtesy: Hung Liu and The Campanil, 2013

  • Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607. Liu’s artistic works were showcased at the Oakland Museum of California in an exhibition from March 16 to June 30, 2013. Hung’s exhibition highlighted the success of her career and the complexity of her art, which had unorthodox styles and ideas; it also highlighted the way she approached art to incorporate a lot of history of Maoist times in China.

By the Rivers of Babylon.
Photo Courtesy: The Oakland Museum of California

~ by Patricia Dalao ~

External Links:

http://www.hungliu.com/bio.html

http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/wabios/liu.html

https://www.kcur.org/post/painter-hung-liu-summons-ghosts-chinas-past#stream/0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_Liu

https://www.squarecylinder.com/2013/04/hung-liu-oakland-museum-of-california/

http://www.thecampanil.com/retiring-and-remembered-hung-liu/

https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/02/25/artist-hung-lius-work-blurs-history-memory/

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2006/11/14/lius-cranes-fly-through-airport-art-installation/

https://msmagazine.com/2016/10/04/hung-liu/

https://nmwa.org/works/untitled-seven-poses

https://museumca.org

Image 3: “Untitled” from Seven Poses
Image 4: Mu Nu (Mother and Daughter) in Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu

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