‘FROM HER TO HERE’: The annual exhibition, an ongoing series to explore feminism, gender diversity and sexual equality, is being held online this year, its organizer said
By William Hetherington / Staff writer, with CNA
Three Taiwanese artists are taking part in the WOMEN我們 exhibition, which this year is being held online by the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
First held in Shanghai in 2011, the annual exhibition has been showcased in different places over the years, including Miami and San Francisco.
It is “an ongoing series which explore feminism, gender diversity, and sexual equality,” the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco’s Web site says.
“WOMEN我們 is a Mandarin homophone meaning both ‘women’ and ‘we,’” the Web site says.
Taiwanese artists Yao Hong (姚紅), Huang Meng-wen (黃孟雯) and Chen Han-sheng (陳漢聲) are participating in this year’s exhibition, titled “WOMEN我們: From Her to Here.”
The exhibition presents works by artists from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, San Francisco and elsewhere, of diverse gender and sexual identities, and focuses on the Asian diasporic experience. Works on display include installations, paintings, photography and other forms of art, the organizers said.
Yao, who describes herself as an “acoustic wallpaper painter” on her Instagram account (@art_waterwater), creates colored-paper installations that “use extremely contradictory imagery to create imagined sound to represent the oppression of the modern fast-paced information age.”
Her piece at this year’s exhibition weaves together her apprehensions about gender and about the surrounding environment, she said.
Huang employs photography and video recordings in her exploration of women in 1950s Taiwan who wore Western-style pants and suits, which she said defied gender norms, and exhibited a sense of being carefree and at ease, and repressed at the same time.
The style was “something regretful concealed within something marvelous,” she said.
Chen’s submission is a mixed-media installation that explores the experiences of middle-school student Yie Yong-chi (葉永誌) who was found dead in the bathroom of his school in Kaohsiung in April 2000.
Yie had frequently been taunted and bullied for having been “too feminine,” and his death at the hands of bullies led to the enactment of the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) in 2004.
The Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, which is hosting the exhibition for the third year in a row, was founded in 1963 through a fund established by John Davison Rockefeller III to support US-Asia exchanges in the visual and performing arts.
The foundation is partnering with the Coexist Exhibition, which was established in Taiwan in 2014 to support artists in the LGBTQ community.
The exhibition started on Feb. 19 and runs until Aug. 28. It can be accessed online at www.cccsf.us/women-from-her-to-here.
