Bodily Representations, Transformative Imaginations: Queerness in the Contemporary Chinese Experimental Art of Ma Liuming and Chi Peng
Location
PANEL: Queer Imaginations & Identity
CELA Moffett
Moderator: Karen Reynolds
Document Type
Presentation - Open Access
Start Date
4-25-2025 2:00 PM
End Date
4-25-2025 3:00 PM
Abstract
Ma Liuming’s Fen-Ma Liuming performances and Chi Peng’s photo series Consubstantiality and I Fuck Me each depict the artist’s own naked body engaged in acts of defiance, from queer sex to questioning binaries of gender and nation. Ma Liuming’s performance works present the binaries of male/female and socialist/capitalist as fluid and blended, queering both himself and the state of China; Chi Peng’s series I Fuck Me forwards a productive critique of personal identity’s relevance in public culture through its engagement with transnational queer politics. Each artist challenges the dominating pressures of normativity and expresses queerness as a mode of existence that resists binary interpretations. Their art reflects expansive expressions of gender and sexuality that serve to problematize postsocialist China’s transformation into a neoliberal state, further demonstrating that the evolution of queerness in Chinese experimental art and China’s development in the era of reforms (post-1978) are intertwined. This paper will illuminate how contemporary Chinese experimental artists use their bodies to create queer expressions that challenge the dominating pressures of heteronormativity, destabilize conformity, and transcend binaries within the developing social and physical landscape of postsocialist Beijing, reflecting the expansive nature of late-20th-century China’s unprecedented urbanization, social change, and economic development.
Keywords:
Queerness, Contemporary art, Classical Archaeology and Art History, China
Recommended Citation
Must, Lee, "Bodily Representations, Transformative Imaginations: Queerness in the Contemporary Chinese Experimental Art of Ma Liuming and Chi Peng" (2025). Research Symposium. 11.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/researchsymp/2025/presentations/11
Major
Art History
Psychology
Project Mentor(s)
Ana Cristina Perry, Modern & Contemporary Art History and Comparative American Studies
2025
Bodily Representations, Transformative Imaginations: Queerness in the Contemporary Chinese Experimental Art of Ma Liuming and Chi Peng
PANEL: Queer Imaginations & Identity
CELA Moffett
Moderator: Karen Reynolds
Ma Liuming’s Fen-Ma Liuming performances and Chi Peng’s photo series Consubstantiality and I Fuck Me each depict the artist’s own naked body engaged in acts of defiance, from queer sex to questioning binaries of gender and nation. Ma Liuming’s performance works present the binaries of male/female and socialist/capitalist as fluid and blended, queering both himself and the state of China; Chi Peng’s series I Fuck Me forwards a productive critique of personal identity’s relevance in public culture through its engagement with transnational queer politics. Each artist challenges the dominating pressures of normativity and expresses queerness as a mode of existence that resists binary interpretations. Their art reflects expansive expressions of gender and sexuality that serve to problematize postsocialist China’s transformation into a neoliberal state, further demonstrating that the evolution of queerness in Chinese experimental art and China’s development in the era of reforms (post-1978) are intertwined. This paper will illuminate how contemporary Chinese experimental artists use their bodies to create queer expressions that challenge the dominating pressures of heteronormativity, destabilize conformity, and transcend binaries within the developing social and physical landscape of postsocialist Beijing, reflecting the expansive nature of late-20th-century China’s unprecedented urbanization, social change, and economic development.
