The Narrative Paintings of Hung Liu, 2002. 

Born in 1948 in Changchun, China, Hung Liu was a university student during the Cultural Revolution. She and other students were sent to be “re-educated” through four years of field labor. After attending the Beijing Teachers College, she taught painting at the Central Art Academy in Beijing. In 1984, she immigrated to the United States to study at the University of California, San Diego, where she received her Master of Fine Arts degree. She is currently an associate professor at Mills College in Oakland, CA.

Ms. Liu’s stunning reproductions of historical Chinese photographs (many taken by Western visitors) address the “cultural collisions” she faced while coming of age during the decade of the Cultural Revolution in China. Her paintings often seem both nostalgic and critical, as they combine western aesthetics with Chinese subject matter, a cross-cultural blend that communicates Liu’s unique sense of beauty. She recreates these scenes in such a way that specific issues of identity are explored: as an individual, as a member of a cultural group, and as a stereotype. Her work is in major museum collections including the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design.

Works in this exhibition will be drawn from Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami.