An artist review by Veronica Di Geronimo
Why Are There No Female Calligraphers?
This is the provocative question posed by artist Wu Xixia (1993), replicating and updating to Chinese society the title of Linda Nochlin’s 1971famous essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
Born in mainland China and later immigrant to Macau and the United States, where she studied, Wu Xixia works in various media, including performance art, installation, sculpture, and painting. At the intersection of gender philosophy and identity, her work uses calligraphy to symbolize a male-dominated society.
In her most famous performances, the artist, dressed in white clothes and underwear that evoke a domestic and intimate dimension, encloses herself in a transparent balloon on whose walls she writes in various calligraphy styles using acrylic paints and hardeners. The transparent balloon is a cage that deprives the artist of oxygen and evokes the image of a womb. The pressure exerted during the writing process induces movements within the balloon that evoke the gentle stirrings of life in a womb, transforming the act into a poetic dance of the creation and confinement of motherhood. A notable of these performance series is 我 (wǒ,ǒ which corresponds to the first-person singular in Chinese), in which the artist lists stereotypes and derogatory labels for women, such as “old virgin,” “slut,” and other ordinary terms in the Sinosphere, such as “green tea bitch.”
The work entitled 毋泉 (wú quán, or non-fountain), created in 2022, features a fountain made of the same inflatable plastic material used for the balloon. On this fountain, the artist writes in nvshu, a 400-year-old script that is part of China’s intangible cultural heritage and invented to allow women to communicate with each other secretly without men’s understanding. Wu Xixia incorporates a hydraulic mechanism that sprays a milky white liquid that could be milk or semen.
Wu Xixia recently had a solo exhibition at the prestigious Today Art Museum in Beijing entitled “Dear Myself.” From15 May to 1 June 2024, the show also explored femininity through biological and genetic material themes, with paintings depicting cellular units and sculptures incorporating eggs. On the exhibition’s second floor, during the opening day, the artist presented a participatory performance specifically conceived for the occasion. Enclosed within the usual plastic ball, the artist outlined the shape of their figure and then promptly filled it with calligraphy. The sphere enclosing the artist was surrounded by eight mirrors with reflective surfaces on both sides. The audience was invited to use these mirrors, multipliers, and amplifiers of collective experience to intervene by writing and drawing. Some traced their figures, while others wrote down their thoughts. Notably, one inscription in Chinese made by one of the visitors states 今天 是好人，明天不一定 (jīntiān shì hǎorén,míngtiān bù yīdìng), that can be translated as “today is a good person, tomorrow it is not the same.” The artist’s performance concluded with the tearing from the inside using a knife, symbolizing a metaphorical rebirth.
