Asian Art by Women: Focusing on the 1990s

were relatively young, having achieved independence in the wake ofWorld War II. As a result, many artists were concerned with deﬁning

the cultural identity of their home countries as well as exploring
their own individual identity and values as artists. At the same time,

Rawanchaikul Toshiko

they were engaged in adapting international or universal styles andmodes of expression to their own needs. They often chose the history,
traditional culture, and symbolic landscapes of their own countries as

While doing research in Beijing at the end of 1994 during a freezingcold winter, I heard from several women about an exhibition of womenʼsart. At that time, the controls on speech and expression instituted by thegovernment after Tiananmen Square protests were still in eﬀect, andavant-garde artists were reduced to holding exhibitions for each other inprivate homes and other places out of the public eye. Because there werewith international and universal forms of expression. An artist who
exempliﬁed this approach was Imelda Cajipe Endaya of the Philippines[p. 106], who is included in this exhibition. She took a strong interest in

the historical and cultural identity of her country when she began her
career in the 1970s.

As time went on, women artists began to deal more and more withso few chances to see the work of progressive artists in open exhibitions, I

the conditions of being a women reﬂect this awareness in their art. This

how excited those women were about this public exhibition of womenʼswomen artists had shown an interest in their own bodies and theirwas more than a little surprised to hear about this show. I well rememberart. Their joy was a ray of sunshine in the cold city.
The exhibition they spoke of was theat the National Gallery of China, Beijing in September

1995. Another exhibition of womenʼs art was presented concurrently
at the World Trade Center in Beijing with work by women from 27
countries. Both exhibitions were organized in conjunction with the1fourth World Conference on Women that convened in Beijing thatSeptember. The political purpose of the exhibitions was to deﬂect

international criticism of the Chinese government for its abuses ofhuman rights, so the government was invested in the success of theconference and invited participants from around the world, including

representatives of the United Nations and human rights organizations
dealing speciﬁcally with womenʼs rights. The

was the ﬁrst major event of its kind in China, successfully

bringing together a large group of contemporary women artists in one

tendency became especially pronounced in the 1980s. In the 1970s,
experience of being stiﬂed by the values and practices of a male-dominatedsociety. In the 1980s, women began making art that strongly opposed

discrimination and violence against women (including the eﬀects of warand terrorism) and explored gender roles and the conditions of womenʼs

lives (including pregnancy and childbirth). Many women artists began
attracting attention for working in new formats, such as installationand performance, and using techniques and materials conventionallyassociated with women, such as ﬁber, beads, and lace. The 1980s was also

a time when women artists began to express themselves more forcefully
with respect to social issues. Endaya, the artist I have already mentioned,

continued to explore the history of the hybrid culture of the Philippinesand Filipino identity but broadened the range of her concerns to include
the issue of violence to all weaker members of society, including womenand children, using familiar everyday materials.

Unfortunately, these new approaches were easily overlooked amid theplace. In addition to Lin Tianmiao [p. 32], who is also included in thelarger trends that dominated the art world. In addition to a longstanding

Jiang Jie, who are still making sculptures dealing with the female body.

for people to react negatively or with insuﬃcient understanding topresent exhibition, it featured such important artists as Xiang Jing andThis exhibition focuses on the 1990s, a period when women artists

came into their own in Asia, becoming an important presence in termsof their numbers and the conceptual and esthetic quality of their work.
The show is chieﬂy composed of artworks created in that decade as well

as recent work by artists who were starting their careers or going througha major transition at the time. It also includes artworks that were createdduring the 1980s and formed the historical background for the work of
the nineties.

In this essay, as one of the planners of the exhibition, I would liketo discuss the factors, including social background and developments inwomenʼs art, that led us to concentrate on this period, giving my personalviews on the necessity and purpose of the exhibition and describing ourapproach to selecting the artists and artworks. Please refer to the essay

by Kokatsu Reiko in this catalogue for further discussion of the themeof the exhibition and how this show should be seen in relation to otherdomestic and international exhibitions with similar aims.

Let us begin by looking at art by Asian women in the 1970s and1980s, since it was roughly around this time that women artists in many
2countries began to consciously confront the reality of being a woman
both physically and socially and seriously express their concerns in art.

In the time period we are dealing with, many of the Asian nations

24

themes and experimented with ways of combining this subject matter｜

Essay 2 Rawanchaikul Toshiko ｜lack of interest in the modern art of Asia, it was common in the 1990s

gender-related art. In the art world, men were in charge of art museums,and for the most part, at least in Japan, they were not particularlyinterested in showcasing Asian women artists. In the early 2000s on,
many more women curators were being trained and going to work formuseums while at the same time there was a growing understandingof gender issues in society at large. As a result, exhibitions of womenartists from Asia have been organized more frequently since then. See
Kokatsu Reikoʼs essay for more information on this subject. Most ofthese exhibitions, however, have focused on current art rather thanproviding a historical perspective. In the present exhibition, we assess
the achievements of women artists from a historical point of view while
also examining contemporary work and looking to future possibilities.

The Fukuoka Art Museum, and its successor, the Fukuoka Asian Art

Museum, have dealt with contemporary Asian art since the end of the1970s, but there has been an unfortunate lack of interest in womenartists and insuﬃcient opportunities to study their work. One reason
for organizing this exhibition is to make up for this previous neglect. Ibelieve there is an urgent need to reﬂect on the historical developmentof womenʼs art in Asia in order to achieve a broader appreciation ofwomenʼs art and how it has changed over time.3

In considering the factors behind the growing activity of womenartists, we need to look at the larger social changes involving women.

the conditions of being a woman to more general historical and social

the world, leading to the United Nationsʼ designation of 1975 as

India [p. 60], whose work and personal example opened up new territory

In the early 1970s, womenʼs liberation movements burgeoned aroundInternational Womenʼs Year and the ﬁrst World Conference on Women,
which was organized that same year. In 1979-1981, the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women andproblems involving women. We also included artists like Arpita Singh offor women in society and in the art world, paving the way for the womenartists who followed them.

This exhibition is composed of 111works (204 pieces) by 50 artists

Children was adopted, signed, and promulgated with the purpose offrom 16 Asian countries and regions that comprise most of the continent.

countries, there was a growing eﬀort to elevate the position of women

works by Idemitsu Mako from the 1970s) to the present. It is the ﬁrstof womenʼs art were organized in conjunction with the International

artists in Japan. Unfortunately, some artists occupying a leading position

creating complete equality between men and women. In many Asianand eliminate gender-based discrimination, and a number of exhibitions

Womenʼs Year and the World Conference on Women. It is diﬃcult to say

how much these exhibitions helped to promote womenʼs art, but they

did provide valuable experience for women artists in countries where

their opportunities were still quite limited during the 1970s and 1980s,
giving them a greater ability to confront the meaning of being a woman
as well as a chance to show their art.

I have already mentioned the fourth World Conference on Women,

which was organized in China in 1995, the ﬁrst such conference tobe held in Asia. Asian women had not had a strong presence at theﬁrst conference, but they participated in the fourth conference inmuch larger numbers and spoke and acted with greater force.4 Their

active participation demonstrated how much women in the countries

and regions of Asia had become sensitized to womenʼs issues over theIt covers a historical span of over 30 years, from the 1980s (including ﬁlm

comprehensive touring exhibition to introduce the work of Asian womenin their country or region could not be included because of limitations

on transportation costs or the unavailability of works that could beexhibited. Also, because we gave priority to artists with little previous

exposure in Japan, we decided to omit some important artists like Lee
Bul, who has had numerous solo shows here plus a major retrospectiveat the Mori Art Museum in 2012. The fact that this show could be put
together in spite of these exceptions shows the depth and strength of thewomen artists working in Asia. India in particular boasts a large numberof exceptional women artists, and it would be possible to organize anexhibition of the same size devoted entirely to women artists from thatcountry.

In Chapter 5, we introduce a number of younger artists who may

preceding two decades. Statements made in the conference showed

not ﬁt neatly into the conventional conception of a woman artist andpersecution under the deeply rooted patriarchal systems and religious

Our purpose here is to show the diversity of views and types ofincreased concern for the plight of women subject to discrimination andartworks that are not primarily concerned with the theme of gender.

values of premodern societies. It also became clear that development andexpression produced by women artists, which cannot be forced into

led to greater poverty and increased violence against women. A call wasthat it was necessary to present the varied expressions of women in all

economic growth promoted with foreign capital and aid had actuallyissued for “gender mainstreaming” in order to promote the eliminationof gender diﬀerences in all government policies, measures, and projects.
The kinds of issues raised in the fourth World Conference on Womena single mold. In order to create a comprehensive exhibition, we felt
their multiplicity while calling attention to major trends, although thisrelativizing approach runs the risk of blurring the focus of the exhibition.
In the past, women artists have had fewer opportunities than men

have been observed with great sensitivity by Asian women in the actualfor receiving professional art training and fewer venues for showing their

Malani of India [p. 104], made during the Mumbai riots of 1993. This

this situation, we wanted to examine the future prospects of younger

but also examines gender issues in relation to the history of colonialism,continuing existence of some restrictions and are pursuing careers thatand rural regions); conﬂicts, violence, and inequality between religions,these younger artists will give us a meaningful glimpse into the future ofby Nalini

work due to the inﬂuence of religious or patriarchal values. In light ofwork embraces the themes treated by women artists up through the 1980s

artists who live in a world where values are diversifying in spite of theinternational economic disparities (as well as disparities between cities

are less encumbered by the limitations of the past. I believe the work ofsocial classes, and ethnic communities; and the destruction of the natural

women artists in Asia.

context of society. A representative example isenvironment. It reveals the imbalance in power relationships underlying

these conditions. The 1990s saw an expansion of consciousness as well

Curator, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum

as brilliant handling of formal concerns in womenʼs art, exempliﬁed(translated by Stanley Nelson Anderson)

by Hanh Thi Phamʼs inquiries into the social position of immigrants,refugees, and homosexuals [p. 86] and Kimsoojaʼs explorations of thegeographical borders of art (paying attention to marginal art) [p. 126].

This exhibition takes a broad look at the ambitious work of Asian

women artists dating back to the 1970s and its development in response

to dramatic social changes, culminating in the mature expressions of the1990s. I believe that this process led to an overall rise in the quality ofwomenʼs art, establishing the position of women artists and expanding

the number of venues where they could show their work. In selecting
artists and artworks, we looked to artists who had responded sensitively
to social change or helped elevate the position of women artists. Thatis, we sought out artists and artworks confronting a range of issues
with strong awareness of gender, from a personal confrontation withOn the exhibition at the World Trade Center in Beijing, where 880 works by women artists
from 27 countries were exhibited, see the website below. http://nmwa.org/sites/default/files/
shared/4.3.4.2-global̲focus̲collection.pdf
2On women artists in Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, see Rawanchaikul Toshiko, “Josei sakkatachino Ajia ‒ 70 nendai kara 80 nendai no sakuhin wo chushin ni” [Asia of women artists ‒ focusing
on works from the 1970s to the 1980s],[Study on Women Artists in the20th Century and their Visual Representations ‒ Memories of War and Diaspora in Asia (basicStudy B)], report issued by Institute of Japanese Studies, Graduate School of Letters, OsakaUniversity, 2011, pp. 99-108. I drew heavily on this article in writing this essay.
3An early example of such exhibitions in Asia was, Earl Lu Gallery, Lasalle-SIA College of Arts, Singapore, 2000.
This exhibition presented the work of 22 women artists from ten countries.
4Matsui Yayori,[The Asia created by women], Iwanami Shinsho,
no. 462, 1996, p. 2. I referred to this book for information on the International Womenʼs Yearand the World Conference on Women.
1｜Essay 2 Rawanchaikul Toshiko ｜25