Artwork Description
Hung Liu – Mississippi, Silver
Dimensions: 30 x 31″ paper / 26 x 26″ plate
Year: 2021
Medium: archival pigment print
with metal leaf and
handwork
Edition: ed. 6/9
Hung Liu was a Chinese-American artist known for her powerful figurative works addressing history, memory, and identity. Her work is included in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian. (C) Hung Liu Estate. The work is signed by the artist. The dimensions are 32 x 31″ (paper size) and 26 x 26″ (plate size). The print features hand-applied metal leaf, which allows the light to dance across the surface. The image is inspired by Dorothea Lange’s Dustbowl era photographs. Hung Liu drew inspiration for this and most of her works featuring American imagery, from Dorothea Lange’s photographs.
(C) Hung Liu Estate
Hung Liu has been acclaimed as the greatest female Chinese American artist of her time. Liu was born in 1948 in a part of northern China experiencing famine, and her family was forced to migrate when she was only a baby. Her father, a Nationalist, was captured and sent to a labor camp at that time, and Liu was not reunited with him until fifty years later, shortly before his death.
Liu, herself was sent to the Chinese countryside to labor in the fields for four years, and there she drew strength from the power of art. She secretly painted, drew, and photographed the village workers, seeing in them the human dignity that she wanted to share. Later, she turned her attention to the young girls who were sold into sex work by their impoverished families. These women had been commodified, their names replaced with the names of rare gemstones or beautiful flowers as their services were marketed to wealthy men. Like the countryside villagers she had rendered previously, she created beautiful places for these women to rest in perpetuity, on backgrounds of gold or silver, surrounded by flowers and other offerings.