Philadelphia-WCA: Exhibition: half the sky: women in the new art of china

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Exhibition: half the sky: women in the new art of china

half the sky: women in the new art of china

Drexel University Curates Major Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Women Artists
featuring 60 works of art by 22 Chinese Women Artists

An historic exhibition of contemporary Chinese women artists will be presented at Drexel University from September 23 to November 12, 2011. Co-curated by the National Art Museum of China and the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery of Drexel University, this survey-scale exhibition will be the first of its kind in the United States. More than 60 artworks by 22 woman artists, including painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation, will be on display.

In July, 2008, Holland Carter of the NY Times referred to Chinese women artists as the "quietly emerging sector" of the Chinese contemporary art world. But the phenomenal rush of so many Chinese artists to international success has bypassed the majority of deserving women artists. Half the Sky attempts to redress this situation by representing a cross section of gifted women artists currently working both inside China and in the Chinese diaspora.

It has been decades since Mao Zedong set communist ideology by proclaiming that women "hold up half the sky." In the West, the Women’s Movement of the 1970s and 80s has elevated the esteem in which women artists are held to a point of approximate parity with men. And yet Chinese women artists, while certainly not ignored on the world stage, are nevertheless overlooked to a significant degree.

Event Details