He Chengyao and Chen Qingqing Art Practice as a Method of Healing
3 March, 2025
Chen Qingqing, The New Allegory of Home, 2023
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This essay will explore the early performance art of He Chengyao and the ongoing installation series in Chen Qingqing’s Fantasy Museum work and how, through different mediums, the artists discussed utilise their practice to heal from and explore their own trauma caused by familial ties, in conjunction with the trauma committed unto themselves and the rest of Chinese society from the effects of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
He Chenyao’s work often explicitly addresses dynamics between mothers and daughters, as well as themes of memory and madness (Guest 2016, 146). Nakedness is a recurring theme and symbol in her art, representing vulnerability and exposure. He Chengyao's performance pieces, particularly her early works, serve as a method of healing from her intricate relationship with her mother and the broader socio-political context of the Cultural Revolution.
Chen Qingqing’s life was completely shaken by the effects of the Cultural Revolution after her family was sent away to a reformation facility designed for revolutionary cadres (Shao 2021). These events provoked her father to attempt suicide numerous times, eventually leading to his passing (Chen 2024). Years later, due to lack of resources and access to treatment, her mother also tragically passed away when Qingqing was eighteen years old (Chen 2024). Her ongoing project Fantasy Museum pulls from her own experiences and explores ideas such as that of death, childhood, memory.
He Chengyoa
He Chengyao, Opening of the Great Wall, 2001
Although causing her to be met with a huge amount of public scrutiny, it was her very first performance piece, Opening the Great Wall (2001), in which she walked on the wall topless, that sparked the beginning of He Chengyao’s (b. 1964) notoriety and future work in performance art. He, at the time, had difficulty explaining the motivation or reasoning behind the performance (Tate 2013). However, upon looking inwards for answers, she began to reflect on her childhood and the years spent witnessing painful humiliations that were inflicted upon her mother by their community, stemming from the fact that she had given birth to He as an unmarried teenage girl (Guest 2016, 148). These degradations eventually led He’s mother to descend into a severe, life-long mental illness (Guest 2016, 146). For many years, He was able to vividly recall the intense shame felt when her mother would manically tear off her clothes in public (Guest 2016, 146). It was this act of her mother’s that He attributed to subconsciously imitating in this performance work (Tate 2013). This action allowed He to express and process her mother’s suffering, along with the societal stigma attached to mental illness, facilitating her in confronting and understanding the intense public scrutiny and personal pain associated with her mother’s condition (Jing 2023).
Mama and Me (2001) is a performance work created in the summer following Opening the Great Wall, in which He’s mother sits half-naked on a stool, playing with a rotting apple. He stands behind her and then, after taking off her own top, embraces her. Rather than a video, this piece is almost exclusively shown as seven photographs taken during the performance and displayed chronologically; this medium of display is also significant to the work as Mama and Me was the first time that the artist and her mother had ever gotten their picture taken together (Brooklyn Museum n.d.). The usage of photography also offers a more introspective and contemplative experience than a video work, as each image is a lot more purposeful in its choice, thereby allowing the viewer to linger on the most impactful moments of their embrace.
He Chengyao, Mama and Me, 2001
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Further depth to interpretation is also added to the performance through He’s choice in framing and composition. Prior to He also taking off her top, there is an apparent disconnect between the pair, with He’s mother’s gaze averted, directed either towards the apple in her hands or to the side. In the first image in which He is also topless, with her hands rest on her mother's shoulders, her mother gazes directly into the camera, smiling, and in the subsequent image, her mother looks up at He. Throughout most of the series, her mother remains the focal point of the images, often with He's head cropped out of the frame. In the final panel, He's head is included in the frame, looking down at her mother as she embraces her. This sequence is particularly meaningful as it not only captures the first photograph taken of the two together, but also represents their coming together and the acceptance of daughter to mother.
It is a healing process. After the series of Mama and Me, when I looked back at my previous works, I saw myself as a patient. After Mama and Me I was cured. I felt really lucky to have art as a kind of healing
He Chengyao’s decision to undress during the performance was a deliberate act to further her understanding of her mother’s experience. Through this performance art, she both reaffirmed their mother-daughter relationship, accepting and forgiving her mother, and confronted the fear of mental illness that had haunted her. He herself reiterated this in an interview with Luise Guest (2016, 146) (see above)
Throughout the entirety of the body of her work, He aims to use her body as a reflection of the culture, politics, and economy China (Guest 2016, 146). This is greatly demonstrated in her 2002 performance work 99 Needles. This performance work complements and expands on He’s earlier work of Mama and Me in its exploration of the mother-daughter relationship and personal trauma, reflecting the artist’s ongoing process of confronting and reconciling with her family’s suffering. 99 Needles involves He self-administering 99 acupuncture needles in order to reenact and experience the same pain that her mother endured when receiving treatments from unqualified rural practitioners (Brooklyn Museum n.d.). Through the undertaking of this work, He seeks to process and release the trauma associated with her mother's suffering, transforming her personal pain into a means of artistic and emotional healing. This self-inflicted suffering allows He to let go of the guilt she carries from childhood of being an observer of her mother's extreme distress when receiving the most painful of treatments (近悦儿童美术馆 2024).
He Chengyao, 99 Needles, 2001
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Through the recreation of these experiences, He aims to embodies the profound suffering faced by her mother, making the trauma tangible and immediate to both herself and the viewer. It’s in this way that the performance also operates as a critique of the broader societal and cultural context of the Cultural Revolution, as during this period, mental illness was highly stigmatized, and individuals like He’s mother were subjected to harsh and unregulated treatments (Shuyue 2023), He explained to Guest (2016, 146):
My mother suffered during the cultural revolution. It was not uncommon for people to commit suicide, or to become schizophrenic. So even though my works represent my mother they have a more universal meaning.
The performance captures the brutality of forced treatments inflicted upon countless mentally ill individuals during that period, placing an emphasis on their inhumane practice (Shuyue 2023). He expressed her personal belief that by exposing this kind of suffering to the world, she was able to forget herself and focus on the bigger picture (Guest 2016, 146). Within these works and throughout her practice, by highlighting these brutal practices through the infliction of them upon herself, He challenges the societal and political structures that perpetuated such inhumane treatment, not only addressing her personal trauma but also commenting on the systemic failures and societal attitudes toward mental health.
Through her engagement with these issues in her performances, He Chengyao not only processes her personal and familial trauma but also critiques the cultural and political structures that perpetuated such suffering. Her art becomes an act of violence against herself, acknowledging past traumas and seeking healing through public ritual and expression (Jing 2023). Through these works, He Chengyao deals with a multifaceted exploration of identity and resilience, specifically with that of motherhood, personal suffering, and a critique of societal values that let both herself and her mother down.
Chen Qingqing
Chen Qingqing (b. 1953) creates her dream-like shadow-box dioramas using materials sourced throughout her life over the past 30 years, being a prominent figure in Chinese feminist art since the 1990s (Vermilion Art Gallery n.d.). These found objects include, children’s toys and dolls, miniature structures imitating traditional Chinese buildings, small shells and lights, keys, natural as well as technological elements, and a seemingly infinite amount of any other kind of object. Throughout her practice, Qingqing possesses the ability to take apparently disconnected items and impressively weave them together into a scene that exudes a strong sense of cohesion and narrative.
Qingqing’s oeuvre is closely entwined to her biography, especially when it comes to her shadow-box work in her ongoing collection of series in Fantasy Museum. Qingqing herself describes the boxes she creates as recreations of her own memories. Through this process of creation, out of the abstract of her mind into the physicality of the final work, Qingqing explores themes of space, her childhood, as well as the relationship she shared with her mother, who passed away when she was eighteen (Chen 2024, 75). Her fondness towards her mother is evident throughout many of her works, often taking on more literal representations of memories; in the sense that they take place in a setting with human figures.
Chen Qingqing, Listen to Mom Talk, 2012
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Examples of this can be found in her Woman Series such as the maternal scene depicted in The New Allegory of Home (2023) as well as Listen to Mom Talk (2012) which is an excellent example of an artwork that seemingly captures both a memory while incorporating symbolic and surrealist elements that capture Qingqing’s tender feelings towards her mother.
Contrasting this, the tone of her Woman Series is wildly different in content to that explored in her Black Memory Series, featuring artworks such as Life hanging by a Thread (2012) and Dialogue – The State of Two Creatures (1999) tableaus that create extremely depressing scenes.. In a conversational interview between Qingqing and Jia Fangzhou, Qingqing expands on Black Memory, explaining that many of the works explore memories of her childhood in the Cultural Revolution (Chen 2024, 196). Despite the heavy subject matter, Qingqing describes feeling happy during the artworks’ construction, with the initial negative feelings that were tied to a bad memory being “long-gone” at the time of its completion (Chen 2024, 196). From this, it would not be erroneous to describe Qingqing’s method of creating Fantasy Museum as an action used by the artist to address, process, and at times to alleviate herself from, the memories accumulated throughout her lifetime.
Left: Chen Qingqing, Life hanging by a thread, 2010
Centre: Chen Qingqing, Cultural Operation, 1998
Right: Chen Qingqing, Dialogue – The State of Two Creatures, 1999
On the 26th of June 2024 in the artist’s stylish, high-ceilinged home in Beijing, Chen Qingqing participated in an interview between herself and a group of students from the University of Western Australia. Qingqing spoke on what initially sparked her inspiration into creating the Fantasy Museum dioramas. The artist recounted the fact that when living overseas in Vienna, she found herself dwelling on an overwhelming number of memories about her life in China. To cope with this, she began to create the shadow-box dioramas as a method to organise her thoughts, filing memories individually into boxes to preserve them forever. In this interview she specifically mentioned that, after seeing an exhibition of his in New York, the work of Joseph Cornell was a great source of inspiration to her. Cornell initially worked as an oil painter but began creating surrealist shadow-box tableaus for his disabled brother. Qingqing’s Fantasy Museum and Cornell’s work share similarities in their medium of install and themes of childhood. For Cornell, who was famously reclusive, it’s been documented that for himself, his tableaus represented a sort of an escape from reality (The Art Story Foundation n.d.). Conversely, for Qingqing, it is apparent that the act of creating the Fantasy Museum tableaus works as a method for the artist to face her reality, reconciling with her (at times traumatic) past.
Perhaps it is this fact that causes Qingqing to be quite guarded over the true meanings behind her work. When asked directly about the significance of an element in one of her pieces her responses are often vague or short, for example, stating that something is the way it is simply because she likes it that way. Qingqing seemingly wants her tableaus to speak for themselves, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions about them, rather than for her to disclose the explicit meaning; claiming that an artist gets no say in how their art is interpreted. It is especially understandable that in her context, due to the overall highly personal nature behind the series and the difficult themes that some of the artworks tackle, as an artist Qingqing would find it easier to express her feelings towards her past experiences through her art practice rather than with words.
Chen Qingqing, Fantasy Museum, 2024
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One cannot fault her apprehension; many artists have the same approach towards discussing the meaning behind their work. However, it is worth drawing a comparison between the attitudes that Chen Qingqing and He Chengyao hold towards sharing information and stories behind their respective works; especially since both artists explore ideas that deal with their own childhood and relationship with their mothers. Specifically the fact that He Chengyao, who has stated numerous times that her performance work was a process of healing her previous trauma, a process that successfully cured her, speaks very openly about the meaning behind her early performances and the memories that are linked to the works. These facts are quite contrary to that of Qingqing’s current circumstances, as Fantasy Museum is still an ongoing project of her’s. So, when looking at her practice as one of healing from her past, it could be the case that her apprehension in explaining the full meaning behind her work, paired with the fact that she is still creating works for the series, is a sign that Qingqing is still undergoing her own process of healing.
Despite her reservations in-person, Qingqing has created several books that feature images of her work alongside pieces of writing. This includes deeply personal stories from childhood and her own poetry, as well as works from other writers that mostly touch on her practice and at-home museum. After the aforementioned interview that took place in her home, while promoting the purchase of said books, Qingqing shared that it is not possible for them to be officially published in China. This is due to their detailed discussion recounting the artist’s experience living through the Cultural Revolution as a young girl, as well as the extremely negative, lasting impacts that it had on her life. While the sentiment of Qingqing’s refusal to flat-out explain the meaning behind or the specific memory that is tied-to a singular work does indeed persist in these books, the accompaniment of particular artworks alongside her personal stories help to bring the narrative behind some of them into focus, revealing a clearer picture of her thought-process behind certain works and series.
Chen Qingqing, My Childhood, 2012
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One of Chen Qingqing’s seemingly straightforward yet haunting installations is titled My Childhood (2017), a piece from her Growth Series. Aptly titled, the installation lends itself to being an interpretation of Qingqing’s adolescence. It is evident that the ideas behind this artwork deal with Qingqing’s experience with and feelings towards growing up under communism during the Cultural Revolution. The focal point of this artwork, Qingqing’s symbol of self, is a blonde babydoll who peers down out of a wooden house, on which quotes from the Little Red Book are scrawled upon the exterior of. Below, dozens of upside-down babydoll legs are neatly lined up evoking imagery of the communist salute. In one of her self-published books, Qingqing draws a comparison to the inclusion of hands and feet in her works to the poem “Beijing at 4:08” by Guo Lusheng (Chen 2024, 116) further contextualising their place in her oeuvre.
The red light that illuminates the entire installation is an effect that is further emulated by a translucent red veil that drapes over the entire scene, displaying how communism permeated in every corner of Qingqing’s life. The use of the veil in the artwork also lends itself the idea Qingqing is mourning the gross amount of loss she experienced from the effects of the Cultural Revolution. Not only were the events that took place during the Cultural Revolution responsible for the loss of both of her parents (Shao 2021) (Chen 2024), Chen Qingqing also experienced the loss of her childhood; being just thirteen years old at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, only finally seeing it end as an adult at the age of twenty-three.
The artworks present in He Chengyao and Chen Qingqing’s oeuvre seem to exemplify ideas surrounding the artists’ relationship and trauma associated with their respective parents. However, when examined within a broader context, it is extremely apparent that this trauma can be traced back and subsequently attributed to the consequences of the Cultural Revolution and the effect it had on those who lived through it. Both artists, through differing mediums, utilise their art practice as a method of healing wounds from the past or alleviating themselves from associated memories caused by both familial ties as well as from the social and political sphere that they were both brought up in and exposed to as very young girls.
Chen Qingqing, My life full of colour, My life riddled with holes, 2018
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References:
Brooklyn Museum. n.d. “Brooklyn Museum: Chengyao He.” Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Brooklyn Museum. Accessed July 20, 2024. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/about/feminist_art_base/chengyao-he. Chen, Qingqing. 2024.
QingQing’s Fantasy Museum. Guest, Luise. 2016. Half the Sky. Dawes Point, Nsw: Piper Press. Jing, Shuyue. 2023. “The Image of Motherhood in New China in the Light of Gender Archaeological Research—on the Meaning of He Chengyao’s Performance Art.” Art and Performance Letters 4 (7): 64–68. https://doi.org/10.23977/artpl.2023.040709.
近悦儿童美术馆. 2024. “近悦展览 | 何成瑶：99针、妈妈和我.” Weixin Official Accounts Platform. June 14, 2024. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/moyBynAf8M2ZqJWgnUEloA. Shao, Qi. 2021. “陈庆庆《中国‘她’艺术》代表性艺术家.” Representative Artist of Chen Qingqing’s
“China’s ‘She’ Art.” CCARTD. August 4, 2021. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kfuyz3Oxe_joHF6TjZa5FA. Tate. 2013. “He Chengyao 何成瑶.” Tate. Tate. November 20, 2013. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/research-centres/tate-research-centre-asia/women-artistscontemporary-china/he-chengyao.
The Art Story Foundation. n.d. “Joseph Cornell Sculptures, Bio, Ideas.” Art Story. The Art Story Foundation. Accessed July 19, 2024. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/cornell-joseph/. Vermilion Art Gallery. n.d. “Chen Qingqing.” Vermilion Art. Vermilion Art Gallery. Accessed July 18, 2024. https://vermilionart.com.au/artist/chen-qingqing/#cv.