Performance Art and Feminism in China: A Conversation with Li Xinmo
10th June, 2020
Chinese artist Li Xinmo, a self-proclaimed feminist, addresses issues of gender inequality, ecology, society and politics through her performance art, despite the Chinese government prohibiting performance art. Freedom and feminism haven’t been part of Chinese conversation and Western feminism has followed a very different trajectory as in the East. Until the #MeToo movement in 2018, women had not taken collective action against gender inequality in China before. Using Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website, Chinese women campaigned against sexual abuse and exploitation in universities and workplaces. It was swiftly met with censorship and the hashtag was removed after it gained traction online. Not unlike performance artists, the activists started dodging censors to keep their voices from being silenced. Despite the risk of censorship and imprisonment Li feels a duty to use her performance art to raise issues of gender inequality and other social and political issues.
This article will begin by giving a brief biography of Li Xinmo and account of her education and art. It will then outline the history of the feminist movement in China and analyse the current moment in China following the #MeToo movement. It will discuss how censorship within China has stymied women’s access to gender equality and resulted in women having to take alternative paths in order to avoid censorship to speak out about issues that they otherwise couldn’t. This essay will analyse how Li Xinmo’s use of performance art challenges the patriarchal dominating structure that had so badly influenced her own life. The goal of this discussion is to situate the state of the feminist movement in China within the broader global feminist discourse.
Biography of Li Xinmo
Li Xinmo started learning painting and calligraphy at a young age. She wanted to specialize in traditional Chinese ink painting and calligraphy so she studied those arts for several years before being admitted into the Department of Chinese Painting of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2005 to study ink painting. When she was a graduate student, she became an Assistant Professor at the College of Modern Art where she assisted in contemporary art creation in relation to modern calligraphy. This was where she discovered contemporary art and she realised she couldn’t express the reality of the state of China with ink painting. Li Xinmo said (2019), ‘At that time, I was very excited. Suddenly, I felt that a new door opened. I could express [myself] in a different way.’ It was during her turn to contemporary art that she came into contact with feminist theory.
A particular event in Li Xinmo’s life that drove her to fight for women took place in 2007 when Li gave birth to her son. The father, a famous art critic, didn’t take responsibility and left her and the child. She later learnt that he was simultaneously involved with numerous women. When the birth of her child became public she was criticised, while the father was defended. She said (2019), ‘It was very depressing at that time.’ She began reading about other women’s experiences on the internet and found that there were other women who had gone through similar injustices. This prompted Li to speak out about gender discrimination in China in her art practice.
A History of Chinese Feminism
There was a large movement toward gender equality that took place in the early Chinese Communist party, where women were built into an important force of socialist construction. This liberation however is also described as a ‘handmaiden’ to the communist agenda, where women’s rights served to support the Marxist critique of the Confucian family norms and in part used as a platform to serve greater political agendas (Gilmartin 21). Women in China have experienced radical changes. However, “feminism” has not been a term that has been accepted partly due to it being a Western ideal. People in China who adopt a feminist stance in China, like Li, are often seen as ‘Western hostile forces’ or ‘controlled by Western hostile forces’ (Gilmartin 21).
The #MeToo Movement and Feminism Now
Chinese women haven’t been afforded the same avenues to stand up against gender discrimination, sexual assault and sexual abuse, as in many other parts of the world. Although China’s constitution guarantees women ‘equal rights with men in all spheres of life’[1], they continue to face barriers in terms of political empowerment (The Situation of Chinese Women). The current traditional cultural structure, patriarchal regime and political agendas all work to stifle freedom of speech for Chinese women and ultimately result in the failure to protect them. The conversation surrounding feminism in China needs to be had in the complex and dynamic political and cultural context of the country.
Like Li, Chinese women who became aware that their experiences were not unique, sought out to cause change and bring about justice. In 2018 women in China joined the #MeToo movement, which aimed to give women a platform to speak up against and share their experiences regarding sexual harassment and assault. The movement followed the #MeToo movement that occurred in many countries across the world. It began with students taking collective action that was co-ordinated across the country, and drew attention to the gender inequality that occurs throughout China. These Chinese feminist activists utilised the connectedness afforded to them by social media platforms in China, and came forward with multiple first person accounts of sexual harassment and assault experienced in universities and eventually more broadly.
Censorship
The #MeToo movement, not unlike any mass dissatisfaction regarding any part of Chinese society, automatically grew tense and attracted censors. For feminists in China, it means having to find alternate paths to challenge the authoritarian, patriarchal regime, that would silence any group that challenges or threatens its power. Much like Li, who turned to performance art to comment on the state of women in China, feminist leaders are forced to impose limits on themselves in order to avoid spurring a reaction that could end the movement.
Women in China are often unable to speak out or are urged by their families to keep silent. Li’s first piece of feminist art, a short film about a woman’s experience being abused by Chinese police, was never shown because the woman didn’t want to share her pain with the public in fear that it would result in her being ostracised. It isn’t uncommon for women to be blamed, an experience that Li relates to. Chinese women fear they will not be able to get married or find a job if their experiences are made public. There is little to no justice that occurs for women in China when they speak out about sexual harassment and assault. The #MeToo movement sought out to set a different example for women in China.
The #MeToo movement has shown women that they are not alone in their experiences. However, it has also meant that censorship surrounding feminism and the #MeToo movement has grown. The censorship is called a policy of ‘cyber sovereignty’, where President Xi Jinping says that China has the right to control information within its borders and block what the CCP deems harmful (Shen 81). #MeToo is a problem for the CCP because the party is founded on egalitarian principles. This results in the avenues for justice in China being stymied due to the censorship that is imposed. Censors took down a majority of the posts relating to the hashtag. When #MeToo was removed from Weibo, feminists in China used the Chinese character 米(Mi), meaning rice, and 兔 (Tu), meaning bunny, creating the new hashtag #米兔 or #RiceBunny. Chinese activists are constantly trying to find new ways to evade censors and censors are constantly trying to find new ways to silence activists. Following the #MeToo movement in 2018, China saw the first legal action taken against sexual assault in the country.
Performance Art and Li Xinmo
Li has created works, particularly in performance art, to speak up about the gender inequality and injustice in China, amidst the rise of feminism in the country. Li, like the feminist activists that led the #MeToo movement, have had to take alternative paths in order to express their dissatisfaction of the treatment of women. Li felt that she held a responsibility to use her performance art as a platform to advocate for women’s rights and make others aware. She knew that her art would resonate with women who would recognise her experiences. Performance art can’t result in a revolution or cause immediate change, however creating awareness and starting conversation around these issues is vital to generate change.
Li Xinmo, performance documentation from Memory, 2013.
Censorship has also effected artists in China, particularly because it became a focus over the past half-decade. Ai Weiwei, who has become one of the most famous Chinese artists, has drawn the attention of the Chinese Communist Party by creating work that speaks very loudly against the party and the state of China. Performance art is prohibited in China but is still used as a platform for artists to express their dissatisfaction with the state of China (Wa-Chia 19). This has not stopped many artists, like performance artist He Yuncheng, who evades censors by performing in secret the night before his shows are scheduled to take place (He 2019). Both Li Xinmo and He Yuncheng believe that performance art can cause some kind of change. It may not be immediate and wide spread but it affects the psyche of viewers. It can also motivate audiences to take action, even when their actions may only be partially effective, and at times, merely symbolic.
Li’s body has become the most immediate and effective outlet for her to highlight issues and influence her viewers. The female body in her performance art represents a political symbol of the wound caused by the subjugation of women. For most of China’s history , women’s bodies have been subjugated. This is what Foucault calls ‘biopower’, a term he defines as ‘an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations’ (Foucault 140). Throughout China’s history biopolitics has enabled governments to control the lives of the Chinese population. Once famous for the one-child policy, China now considers pushing women to have more children because Beijing has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. This could be seen as undermining efforts to stimulate the economy. Single women are being called ‘leftover women’ in order to shame them into getting married and having children.
Performance documentation from Li Xinmo, Death of the Xinkai River, 2008.
By using her body, Li reclaims her physical body while demonstrating the physical and mental pain women have had to endure. Women have been expected to perform for men and Li breaks down the assumption that when women perform it is to appease the male gaze. Not only does she use her body to reject this idea, but through the physical discomfort she puts herself through, she overwhelms audiences. She draws them into the pain that is experienced by women when they are controlled through their bodies. Li exposes her own wound, over and over again, hurting herself in her art, and her courage challenges audiences. In 2013, Li performed Memory as a part of her exhibition Secret Love in Sweden. The work is based on her painful experiences of abortion and deals very closely with the experience of women’s body .While tearing her dress of to make dolls, she spoke to the audience about her painful experiences of each abortion and how they affected her. She made herself completely vulnerable and drew her audiences in with the images of the suffering she experienced.
Much of the #MeToo movement has focused on Western societies and China has been left out of the greater feminist discourse. The movement has been prevalent in China but has had a different quality because China’s history of feminism is so different from that in the West. The movement has also had more difficultly in moving forward because of the state imposed censorship. This has left open a gap that allows performance art a potentially greater role as one of the only avenues for instigating social change. In her performance art, Li Xinmo has utilised her platform to highlight the gender inequality in China with the aim of generating any social change that may be possible.
Bibliography
Foucualt, Michel (1981), The History of Sexuality. Volume 1, trans. Robert Hurley, Penguin, London.
Gilmartin, C.K. (1995), Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s, University of California Press, Berkeley.
He, Yung Cheng (2019), Interview with UWA student group, 27 June.
Li Xinmo (2019), Interview with Valentina Sartori, 27 July, via email.
The Situation of Chinese Women (1994), Document published by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing.
Wan-Chia, Wang (2013), Censorship and Subtle Subversion in Chinese Contemporary Art, Masters thesis, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York.
Yi, Shen (2016), ‘Cyber Sovereignty and the Governance of Global Cyberspace,’ Chinese Political Science Review 1(1): 81-93.