Tamed: Hair and Female Subjectivity

This thesis explores the continued discrimination against women in China today, and examines my art research throughout the study of the Master of Fine Arts degree at University of Calgary. Although, since 1949, Mao Zedong had proclaimed that “women hold up half of the sky,” in fact societal pressure on women to conform is so great that even women’s association have co-opted the derogatory term “leftover women” (shengnü) for defining the unmarried women. Sociologist Leta Hong Fincher has studied this phenomenon and her results are the scientific foundation for my artistic exploration. Through using the image of hair as a metaphor, my art practice concerns the social and cultural containment imposed on women, revealing the dilemmas and obstacles that women experience in their lives. Technically, I have investigated ways of coalescing Western drawing methods and Chinese line art together, and have reoriented the traditional Chinese scrolls into installation art.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Graduate Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Lin, Ziya

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Huynh, Kim Lan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Hout, Marie Claire
• Leblanc, Jean-René

• Fine Arts

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

eng

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/27976

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:11023/4189