Artwork Description
Hung Liu – Le Ran Butterfly
Dimensions: 33 x 27.75 x 3″ framed / 31 x 25″ unframed
Year: 2003
Medium: color etching, acquatint, and spitbite with attached glass and porcelain figures
Edition: ed. 11/20
Hung Liu, Le Ran Butterfly is an exceptional multimedia print that undoubtedly contributed to Liu being awarded the Southwest Printmaking Award. Her innovation of incorporating actual Chinese perfume bottles and literati figures into the print edition makes this edition one of the greatest she ever created. Her rendering of the Chinese prostitute, likely sold into sex work by her familiy due to their inability to provide for her, is one of her most iconographically significant. She wants these women to be remembered, even though history may have forgotten who they were. She provides a beautiful place for them to live on through eternity, in her artworks. 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, the Whitney, and the Smithsonian. (C) Hung Liu Estate. The work is signed by the artist.
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.