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Foregrounding and Backgrounding
An Interview with Guo Qingling
Abstract The works of contemporary artist Guo Qingling were featured in the two exhibitions curated for the HERA project on single women, in Shanghai and in Leiden. Engaging with the problematic of precarity, the exhibitions probed into the experience of women in rapidly changing Asian cities like Shanghai and Delhi. Guo’s paintings offered responses to the anxieties, insecurities, liveliness, and, above all, sheer complexities engendered in the intersections of gender, class, and urbanity. The women in Guo’s works stand on their own—single in that sense—facing us, or with their back against us, intent on their labor. They are sometimes rendered in bold strokes, sometimes in opacity, oscillating between fragility and fortitude. Born in 1973, Guo graduated from the Shanghai Drama Institute and later became an artist. Known for their visualization of women, Guo’s works have been presented in her native China, the United States, and Europe. She lives and works in Shanghai and New York. In this interview, we invite Guo to deliberate on her creative experience, personal life, and concerns with femininity, humanity, and the contemporary world. Our aim is to attempt a dialogue between an artistic project and the academic discussions carried on in this anthology.
Keywords single women; China; Guo Qingling; contemporary Chinese
art; paintings
