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One Finger, One Road: Political Journeys in Contemporary Chinese Art
Regional Center Workshop with Middlesex Community College
November 18, 2022
Hosted Online: 9:00am-11:30am Hawaii, 2:00pm-4:30pm Eastern, 1:00pm-3:30pm Central, 11:00am-1:30pm Pacific
The interplay of art and politics has a long history in China. This half-day workshop will explore their relationship at two critical junctures in recent Chinese history: in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution and in those following the launch of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative. The online program will include both lectures and discussions and is free for registered participants.
"One-Finger-Chan": Pan Tianshou's Art of Resistance
Dr. Shelley Drake Hawks, Middlesex Community College
This presentation focuses on Pan Tianshou’s paintings just prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), during which Pan died tragically, interpreting his work from the perspective of Chan/Zen Buddhism. Pan is revered as one of the 20th century’s foremost innovators of Chinese painting and a rare master of painting in ink with finger, fingernail, and bare hand. As president of China National Art Academy in Hangzhou, Pan argued against blending Chinese art with Western art forms and encouraged growth and experimentation from within the parameters of China’s centuries-long traditions. Pan prized Chan Buddhism for its emphasis on simplicity and freedom from rules, and this session explores how his best finger paintings function as koans (gong-an)—puzzles used by Chan teachers to guide students to enlightenment.
Shelley Drake Hawks, Ph.D. is Adjunct Faculty in the Humanities at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and has previously taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Mt. Holyoke College. She earned her MA in East Asian Regional Studies at Harvard University and her doctorate in Chinese history at Brown University. Her book, The Art of Resistance: Painting by Candlelight in Mao’s China, was named the “Best art book of 2019” by the International Convention of Asia Scholars, Universiteit Leiden. The four-part film, The Lotus and the Red Star, features her interviews with Chinese painters and is available at: http://arthistorypi.org/books/art-of-resistance.
What Art Asks along China’s Belt and Road
Dr. Sasha Su-Ling Welland, University of Washington
This talk is based on an essay, co-authored with Christina Yuen Zi Chung, “Wandering Geographies: Aesthetic Practice along China’s Belt and Road Initiative” (2021), published in a special issue of Feminist Studies on Global Intimacies: China and/in the Global South. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the New Silk Road, aspires to create a China-centered global trading network through investment in infrastructure projects across dozens of countries. This talk focuses on contemporary art that makes visible minor transnational connections along the edges of this top-down plan. Selected works by Sinophone artists ask that we attend to the materiality and movement of bodies, things, resources, and ways of seeing, as they give form to hidden histories of gendered labor, care work, environmental extraction, diaspora, and displacement.
Sasha Su-Ling Welland is Chair and Professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is author of A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (2006) and Experimental Beijing: Gender and Globalization in Chinese Contemporary Art (2018). Her writing has appeared in Journal of Visual Culture, positions: asia critique, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among other journals and anthologies.
This workshop is part of the ASDP Regional Center Workshops series.
One Finger, One Road: Political Journeys in Contemporary Chinese Art
Regional Center Workshop with Middlesex Community College
November 18, 2022
Hosted Online: 9:00am-11:30am Hawaii, 2:00pm-4:30pm Eastern, 1:00pm-3:30pm Central, 11:00am-1:30pm Pacific
The interplay of art and politics has a long history in China. This half-day workshop will explore their relationship at two critical junctures in recent Chinese history: in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution and in those following the launch of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative. The online program will include both lectures and discussions and is free for registered participants.
"One-Finger-Chan": Pan Tianshou's Art of Resistance
Dr. Shelley Drake Hawks, Middlesex Community College
This presentation focuses on Pan Tianshou’s paintings just prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), during which Pan died tragically, interpreting his work from the perspective of Chan/Zen Buddhism. Pan is revered as one of the 20th century’s foremost innovators of Chinese painting and a rare master of painting in ink with finger, fingernail, and bare hand. As president of China National Art Academy in Hangzhou, Pan argued against blending Chinese art with Western art forms and encouraged growth and experimentation from within the parameters of China’s centuries-long traditions. Pan prized Chan Buddhism for its emphasis on simplicity and freedom from rules, and this session explores how his best finger paintings function as koans (gong-an)—puzzles used by Chan teachers to guide students to enlightenment.
Shelley Drake Hawks, Ph.D. is Adjunct Faculty in the Humanities at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and has previously taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Boston University, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Mt. Holyoke College. She earned her MA in East Asian Regional Studies at Harvard University and her doctorate in Chinese history at Brown University. Her book, The Art of Resistance: Painting by Candlelight in Mao’s China, was named the “Best art book of 2019” by the International Convention of Asia Scholars, Universiteit Leiden. The four-part film, The Lotus and the Red Star, features her interviews with Chinese painters and is available at: http://arthistorypi.org/books/art-of-resistance.
What Art Asks along China’s Belt and Road
Dr. Sasha Su-Ling Welland, University of Washington
This talk is based on an essay, co-authored with Christina Yuen Zi Chung, “Wandering Geographies: Aesthetic Practice along China’s Belt and Road Initiative” (2021), published in a special issue of Feminist Studies on Global Intimacies: China and/in the Global South. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the New Silk Road, aspires to create a China-centered global trading network through investment in infrastructure projects across dozens of countries. This talk focuses on contemporary art that makes visible minor transnational connections along the edges of this top-down plan. Selected works by Sinophone artists ask that we attend to the materiality and movement of bodies, things, resources, and ways of seeing, as they give form to hidden histories of gendered labor, care work, environmental extraction, diaspora, and displacement.
Sasha Su-Ling Welland is Chair and Professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is author of A Thousand Miles of Dreams: The Journeys of Two Chinese Sisters (2006) and Experimental Beijing: Gender and Globalization in Chinese Contemporary Art (2018). Her writing has appeared in Journal of Visual Culture, positions: asia critique, and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among other journals and anthologies.
This workshop is part of the ASDP Regional Center Workshops series.
