IN MEMORY OF HUNG LIU, 1948–2021

Hung Liu, beloved artist and friend to SJMA, passed away on Saturday, August 7.

A pillar of the Bay Area arts community and an internationally renowned artist, Hung touched the lives of everyone she met through her warmth, grace, and generosity.

 

ABOUT THE ARTWORK. (excerpt from our permanent collection artwork page, go to the page to read more about the artwork https://www.dcsjma.org/artwork-pc/liu-shoah)

 

Using a striking combination of traditional Eastern imagery and contemporary Western style, Chinese-born Hung Liu strives to reclaim her native country’s history and its culture in her paintings. In her vast, mural-like creations, Liu deconstructs the past and reassembles it in order to give new life and a fresh identity to those who have gone before. Through the appropriation of historical photographs, Liu paints what she refers to as “pastiches of style and clashes of culture.”

 

This five panel painting portrays three young female warriors against a deep red backdrop, contrasting lotus flowers, symbols of peace and serenity, with the evidence of war – rifles, bones, and a mass grave. A bloody tone is reinforced by the work’s title, which is the Modern Hebrew word for catastrophe. According to Liu, this artwork exposes the “Rape of Nanking,” a Japanese-led extermination of some 300,000 Chinese people in 1937, and a violent episode that is hardly known, relative to the Holocaust. As in many of her paintings and prints, Liu focuses on the representation of women – prostitutes, brides, mothers as well as warriors – who are depicted as individuals, rather than simply a nameless, insignificant part of history. This artwork also demonstrates her signature technique of “veils” of running paint that obscure the image, imparting a soft-focus quality, and recalling the appearance of aging photographs. Shoah demonstrates the artist’s careful balance of rich imagery on the surface and an underlying powerful historical content.

 

Visiting Hung Lui at her studio in Sept. 2011 we asked her about some of the elements in her works:

• Lotus - peace and serenity, flowers seen at funerals.

• Circles- universal image, something but nothing, period in traditional Chinese writing, a punctuation that can mean beginning or end, Daoism- full and empty, surface interest.

• Drips – visual uncertainty yet continuity, a metaphor for loss of memory, like old photographs with impeded visibility.