The Secret Language of Women – 女人之秘言
Yuanfen New Media Art Space
Beijing 798
March 6, 2010 – April 10, 2010

“Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.”
Angela Carter, feminist author

If what Angela Carter wrote is correct, then how should we understand “women’s script” or nü shu (女书), a secret written language of women that was created in China hundreds of years ago? At that time, most women’s feet were bound, and all women were excluded from the halls of power and learning.  Were the "sworn sisters" (結拜姊妹)who created booklets that were as tightly bound as their feet, booklets that contained “third day missives” (三朝書), actually subversives secretly amassing power? Were the women who passed down the nü shu characters woven into brocades and who brushed them, graffiti-like, onto silk fans for their daughters, actually misandrist renegades creating their own feminist culture?  Were the nü shu folk songs and monodies soulful laments of the disenfranchised and enslaved concubines clandestinely transmitting their plans for liberation?   

Some have thought that the answers to these questions were an unequivocal “yes.”  The Japanese suppressed the script during their occupation of China in the 1940s, concerned that it could be used as a secret code for sending messages.  The Red Guards also suppressed nü shu during the Cultural Revolution, perhaps fearing the power in the hypnotic melodies that accompanied the stories from feudal nü shu literature would stymie their efforts to obliterate feudalism.

It is nü shu that has inspired this exhibit, The Secret Language of Women, which opens March 6, 2010, two days before the 100th (some say 99th or 101st) anniversary of International Women’s Day.  The Socialist Party of America declared the first International Women’s Day (IWD) in the United States on February 28, 1909.  Not always a peaceful or benign celebration, a year later 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York City, protesting poor working conditions and demanding better pay, shorter working hours and suffrage.  Today IWD is a global celebration of the social, economic and political accomplishments of women.

Yuanfen New Media Art has asked a number of accomplished male and female artists to reflect on the theme of The Secret Language of Women and exhibit the product of those reflections at our gallery. Artists whose works will be showcased at The Secret Language of Women include: Zhu Hui (China), Patricia Henriquez (Mexico), Teresa Wennberg (Sweden), Beat Kuert (Switzerland), Yam Lau (Hong Kong and Canada), Wang Hailei (China), J-Colby Wayne (USA) and Humphrey Wou (USA).   

In addition to the exhibit Yuanfen will be hosting a number of events during the exhibition period including documentaries on nü shu and on topics related to women.  

Yuanfen & ASR – Artists’ Social Responsibility

The Artists and Their Works

Zhu Hui An extraordinary animation artist, Zhu Hui is a full-time faculty member at Tsinghua University, School of Fine Arts. She lectures on storyboard, character animation, pre-production and ”The Language of Film”. Her animations range from the avant-garde to highly commercial work and she employs both traditional hand drawing and 3D computer rendering.   With a strong academic background in film, she currently focuses on video art.  At the same time, she also excels in conceptual art, cartoons and illustration. Her animation work has been exhibited in many venues, including, most recently, ISEA 2009 in Belfast. She was selected to be on the jury of SIGGRAPH 2009 for review of student computer animations. She has presented academic papers at many conferences including ISEA 2008 and 2009 and SIGGRAPH AISA 2008.  This is the first time she has exhibited at Yuanfen. 

Zhu Hui’s Work on exhibit at YuanfenSplit & Fusion This short 3D animation shows, in abstract form, the life cycle.  Everything in the world is in a state of constant change. So are our bodies:  mitosis | karyokinesis |cytokinesis – cells splitting and fusing. This animation begins with a zygote that quickly cleaves into two, four, eight … until hundreds of cells form a blastula. The thin wall of the blastula further grows into triple-layered cells to prepare for the development of the organs, tissue, and skin of a yet-to-be-born baby. But those same cells could be developed into embryonic stem cells rather than a baby. Cruel irony: The most valuable medicine to save lives comes from another, potential human life.  Artistic inspiration and imagination can form at the bottleneck created when science and morality collide. If our cells could split into new ones forever, maybe the value we attach to life would be altered. If cells are elements that are only temporarily consigned to our bodies, elements that make up all life on earth, then doesn’t that mean we, in fact, are the cells that make up the earth’s great life-system?  

Patricia Henriquez Born in Mexico City in 1967, from 1988 to 1992 Patricia studied at La Esmeralda, National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. (INBA).  During the same period, she studied in the studios of the Plastics Arts National School (UNAM). Since 2002, Patricia has been affiliated with a program under the Ministry of Finance, Mexico and since 2007 she has been a member of National System of Artistic Creators, FONCA-CONACULTA, the National Fund for Culture and Arts and the National Council for Culture and Arts, Mexico City. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and joint exhibitions including Found in China, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Tank Loft Arts Center, Chongqing, 2005; Seeded Wind and The Silent body, Museum of Contemporary Art: Number 8, MAC8, Aguascalientes, Mexico; Parcels for the Promised Land“, KunstBüroBerlin, Berlin; De-Autor, San Lorenzo de El Escorial., Madrid; Sanctuary, Mexico Institute, Paris; Six Decades of the National School of Panting, Sculpture and Engraving, Central Gallery of National Art Center, Mexico City; International Encounter Johnnie Walker in the Arts; and The Code of the Images in Latin America, Modern Art Museum, Mexico City.  Patricia’s work is found in many collections including: the Bratislava City Gallery; the Contemporary Art Museum number 8, MAC8,  Aguascalientes; UAM, Rectory, Autonomous Metropolitan University; the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Yucatán; the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, University of El Paso, Texas;  the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing; and the Museum of the Ministry of Finance, Mexico City.

Patricia’s work has received a number of very significant awards including, most recently, first prize in Non-narrative Animation CutOut Fest 2009, Queretaro , Mexico.    

Teresa Wennberg In addition to her painting career, Teresa started making videos in Paris in 1978 at the Georges Pompidou Center and went on from there to explore the possibilities with computers. Her multidisciplinary background (law, economics, languages, painting, sound theory, video, photography and computer graphics) makes Teresa an outstanding figure in the world of art, computer science and media technology. Teresa’s work has received numerous awards and has been presented in exhibitions including: the Biennale de Paris, 1980; Ars Electronica, Linz; ELECTRA, Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm; Kulturhuset, Stockholm; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile; ICC, Tokyo and the VR-Cube at KTH, Stockholm. Ms Wennberg’s body of work includes: Oblivion Pond; Transit Hall"; Hatters' Time; The Memory Room; Alphabet Utopique; 4U2C ; Elusive Self. In 1997, she started working with Virtual Reality at the Center for Parallel Computers (PDC) at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She has just finished her fourth VR creation SOFT FACTORY: a virtual visit to into a human (eukaryotic) cell. Her artistic work is engaged in concepts such as time, language, memory and perception, trying to humanize the world of digital media through poetic and imaginative installations.  

Teresa Wennber’s work on exhibit at YuanfenAlphabet Utopique This a 3-D Computer Graphic image, elaborated in 1987-89 in Paris using the French pioneer 3D-program IKO-TRAJ, developed by mathematician Michel Bret at the CIMA (Centre d'Informatique et de Méthodologie en Architecture”, Université Paris VIII).  It was part of a research series conducted by the artist, combining very thin and simple objects with refined texture mapping, where not only the motive of the “map” but also transparency, reflection and other surface parameters were introduced. Collaboration: Anne-Marie Pecheur.HONORARY MENTION - ARS ELECTRONICA, Linz 1989 

Double Alpha: Amnesie/Amnesia The 3-D Computer Animation series Double Alpha - Part I, II and III were produced during an Artist Residency at the GAMSAU Computer Laboratory in Marseille, France 1993-1995, thanks to support from the Arts Grants Committee, Sweden and from FRAC-PACA, France. Exhibited here at Yuanfen is a video loop of Part III: Amnesie/Amnesia, 1995 (3D computer interpolation/animation - Explore/Silicon Graphics). Yes, the word A M N E S I A, like our fainting memory, appears and dissolves in a computer graphic dance where the primus motor is our human weakness coupled with a very complicated, manually directed interpolation process between about 560 different forms.   

Beat Keurt Born in 1946 in Zurich, Mr Kuert lives and works in Arzo, Switzerland. In 1966 Beat made his first experimental films and started to work as a director for Turnus Film Zurich in 1968. In 1971, after a stay in Latin America, he made his first documentary.  Following this he began working with Swiss German Television on cultural programs. In 1996 Beat began making television documentaries on famous architects, including Jean Nouvel, Mario Botta, Herzog & de Meuron.  Acknowledged as one of the most audacious explorers of his generation in Switzerland, in 2005 he founded the group dust&scratches that focuses on video art, performances and music. His experimental works include: Die Zeit ist böse (1981), Il grande inquisitore (1991) and Am Ende der Zeit. Beat had a solo exhibit at Yuanfen in November 2008: Destroyed Lines. Beat’s images are born from the performances by dust&scratches; they lose their physical aspects and the realism of the performance from which they originate – some sort of body-art - and acquire a valence that reveals the same artificiality as painting and sculpture. They undergo the very same alchemical transformation.  

Beat Kuert’s work on exhibit at YuanfenFrames of a Day and TwindreamThe photographs on exhibit are stills from Beat’s videos, in which the most representative image is stopped and isolated, perhaps to allow a deeper and more elaborated reading. Beat employs the metamorphic abilities of the video image utilizing the possibility of intervening on the electronic “texture” of the figures using the infinite fragmentation of pixels and the possibilities of the electronic color in a strongly symbolical and metaphoric manner, proclaiming its intrinsic evocative qualities. Suddenly and Hell above HeavenThese videos were created from a performance done by dust&scratches at Yuanfen in November 2008.  His symbolical figures represent a living existence that the artist perceives as form/work of art. It is therefore obvious that Beat uses a sort of artifice in his work, replacing the “performance”, or the direct display of the event, with the video record of the observed event. Through this artifice, it gains a diverse legibility, and a different and transfigured significance.   

Yam LauYam Lau was born in Hong Kong and is currently based in Toronto, Canada. He received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Alberta. His creative work explores new expressions and qualities of space, time and image. His most recent works combine video and computer-generated animation to re-create familiar spaces and activities in varied dimensionalities and perspectives. Also, Lau publishes regularly on art and design and is active in the local art community. Certain aspects of his art practice, such as using his car and a donkey as an on-going mobile project space, are designed to solicit community participation. Lau has exhibited widely across Canada, United States and Europe.  He is a recipient of numerous awards from the arts councils in Canada. Currently Lau is a Professor of painting at York University, Toronto. In addition to his teaching and research, Lau also serves on the board on YYZ Artists’ Outlet, an important public gallery in Canada. His work is represented by Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto. http://www.leokamengallery.com and Yuanfen New Media Art Space in Beijing. Yam Lau’s work has been exhibited at Yuanfen in both 2008 and 2009.   

Wang HaileiHailei, a 31 year-old Beijing resident, originally from Qingdao, describes himself as an artist, a designer and a computer programmer.  With a background in classical Chinese philosophy, history, literature and art, in addition to the exceptional art he creates, Hailei composes classical Chinese poems, practices calligraphy and studies architecture. He majored in English language and literature in university and minored in economics and computer science. When he was a junior in university, he fell in love with the cello, which prompted him to study Western music history.   It's been nine years since he first encoded computer programs after being certified by Microsoft as a Systems Engineer.  During his time at Microsoft he evolved from programmer to Interactive Designer. After leaving Microsoft in 2008, he started his own company, Farefore, and became fully engaged in interactive design and generative art. Hailei exhibited in 2009 at Yuanfen in a joint exhibit, Emerging Visions   

J-Coby Wayne J-Coby Wayne is a poet, artist and evolution guide. She is founder of e3 Poetry (experience/energy/evolution) and co-founder, Chief Experience Guide of Energy Arts Alliance. She is author of three poetry books, Words Are Not Enough: A Compass for the Evolving Life (eBook), The Voice Speaks: A Window to Awake" (upcoming eBook) and Early Wanderings: Deserts and Gardens of Sleep (upcoming eBook). J-Coby's art tends to be mixed media and always aims to capture the energy and universality behind experiences, ideas and philosophies to contribute to personal and social evolution. A student of universalities all her life, she studied three different concentrations for her BA at Brown and five different specializations for her MA at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Harvard + Tufts Universities). She derives the inspiration for her creative projects from driving and camping trips to state and national parks, singing with the United Nations Association International Choir, volunteering with Dance Source Houston and working with Energy Arts Alliance clients to help discover, navigate and explore their unique evolutions paths and contributions to life.  

J-Copy Wayne’s work on exhibit at YuanfenYear Window (2009-2010) is a mixed media and digital media work of crepe paper, paper, pencil, poetry, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe PhotoShop, Microsoft PowerPoint, Creative Commons mp3 music clip and digital camera. It provides a progressive experience of the energy nature of time and the rhythmic aspect of life that inform the secret language and inner landscape of all human beings, but women in particular, who are often consciously aware of the influence of flows.   

Humphrey Wou A film maker from San Francisco, Humphrey Wou is the producer and director of The Red Scarf, a documentary that was motivated by Humphrey’s profound commitment to change society’s perception of those living with HIV and AIDS in China.  The Red Scarf premiered in November 2008 at a exhibition at Yuanfen of hand-knitted red scarves representing the major HIV/AIDS affected populations, a project driven by Dandelion, the Online Network for Women Living with HIV, and sponsored by the UNDP, UNICEF and the Zeshan Foundation.  We are honored to be showing The Red Scarf again as part of The Secret Language of Women and, once again, supporting the great work of Dandelion.