Hung Liu, a leading figure in the contemporary art world in both the United States and China, will present a talk titled “From Painting to Other Medium” at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9 in the Kemper Recital Hall inside Spratt Hall at Missouri Western State University. The talk is free and open to the public.
Liu’s works focus on what she calls the “mythic poses” that underlay the photographic surfaces of history. With an overlay of traditional Chinese birds, flowers, insects, dragons and most recently stylized human figures, Liu offers her subjects artistic evidence of their own rich heritage.
Liu’s exhibition titled “Tilling the Soil” was recently shown at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art Gallery in Kansas City, and her major exhibition “Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu” is currently on display at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City through Jan. 11, 2015.
In “From Painting to Other Medium,” Liu will talk about how language, culture, music and more have influenced her career as a visual artist in China and the United States.
Born in Changchun, China in 1948, one year before the creation of the People’s Republic of China, Liu lived through Maoist China and experienced the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Trained as a social realist painter and muralist, she came to the United States in 1984 to attend the University of California, San Diego, where she received her Master of Fine Arts. One of the first people from mainland China to study abroad and pursue an art career, she moved to northern California to become a faculty member at Mills College in 1990 and has continued to live and work in the Bay Area. She has exhibited internationally at premier museums and galleries and her work resides in prestigious private and institutional collections around the world.
Hung Liu currently lives in Oakland and is a tenured professor in the Art Department at Mills College.
“From Painting to Other Medium” is funded by the Missouri Western State University Foundation and presented by the Department of Art at Missouri Western.
For more information about Liu’s talk, contact assistant professor of art Kathy Liao at 816-271-4451. For more information about the exhibition of Liu’s work in Kansas City, visit www.kemperart.org.
Missouri Western State University is a comprehensive regional university providing a blend of traditional liberal arts and professional degree programs. The university offers student-centered, high quality instruction that focuses on experience-based learning, community service, and state-of-the-art technology. Missouri Western is located in St. Joseph, Mo., and is committed to the educational, economic, cultural and social development of the region it serves. Visit www.missouriwestern.edu.