“Offerings” and “Improvisational Elements”: Two Threads in Hung Liu’s Works

Abstract

Born and raised in a turbulent and ever-evolving world, Hung Liu’s trajectory as both a Chinese American artist and a teacher coincided with the ever-changing international politics, cultural norms, and evolving art world. As a motivated and prolific artist, Hung Liu kept challenging her existing art practices and developed a heterogeneous oeuvre. Building on their pioneering and comprehensive research, this paper mainly deploys a “biography-centered” approach to find her turning points in her career and hence offer a different perspective to characterize Liu’s practices. This paper argues that there are two decisive moments in Hung Liu’s career: the teaching by Allan Kaprow and her first portrayal of suffering subjects’ photographs in 1988, which reveals the “offerings” and “improvisational style” in Liu’s works. My proposal is not against previous scholars’ analyses; instead, it merely offers new moments and new words to summarize the existing scholarship’s reflections on this ever-changing artist.