Hung Liu’s life story unfolded like the myths she loved as a child, tales of women propelled by circumstance out of their homes and into the fray of history. Hoping to escape the rising Communist forces as they took over China’s countryside, her family fled to Beijing, only to be exiled back to a remote area; later, she would move to the United States, living in various cities along the California coast, where she began studying and making art. By the time her name was well known, she had perfected her distinct type of painted portraiture, featuring people who had been left behind, both in China and beyond.
Read MoreNational Portrait Gallery: Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands →
Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands
August 27, 2021 - May 30, 2022
The story of America as a destination for the homeless and hungry of the world is not only a myth. It is a story of desperation, of sadness, of uncertainty, of leaving your home. It is also a story of determination, and—more than anything—of hope.
— Hung Liu, 2017
Hung Liu (1948–2021) was a contemporary Chinese-born American artist, whose multilayered paintings established new frameworks for understanding portraiture in relation to time, memory, and history. Often sourcing her subjects from photographs, Liu elevated overlooked individuals by amplifying the stories of those who have historically been invisible or unheard. Having lived through war, political revolution, exile, and displacement, she offered a complex picture of an Asian Pacific American experience. Her portraits speak powerfully to those seeking a better life, in the United States and elsewhere. Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands will be first major exhibition of the artist's work on the East Coast. This is also the first time that a museum will focus on Liu’s portraiture.
Read More1st Dibs Introspective →
We spoke with the artist, in one of her last interviews, about the messages in her striking figurative works, which will be featured in a posthumous show at the National Portrait Gallery.
BY MARLENA DONOHUE
Chinese-born, Oakland-based HUNG LIU is the first artist of Asian descent to have a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The achievement is bittersweet. The show — titled “Portraits of Promised Lands” and opening August 27 — was to be a celebration of 50 years of work, bringing together 50 of her multilayered figurative drawings, photos, paintings and collages. Instead, it will be a posthumous tribute, as the vibrant 73-year-old Liu passed away on August 7 after a short illness.
Read MoreNYTimes: Hung Liu, Artist Who Blended East and West, Is Dead at 73 →
Hung Liu, a Chinese American artist whose work merged past and present, East and West, earning her acclaim in her adopted country and censorship in the land of her birth, died on Aug. 7 at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 73.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, which represents Ms. Liu in New York, said in a statement.
Read MoreWashington Post: Hung Liu, Chinese American artist who elevated the poor and forgotten, dies at 73 →
Hung Liu in 1980, when she was a graduate student in Beijing. (Courtesy of Hung Liu and Jeff Kelley)
Yesterday at 6:22 p.m. EDT
Hung Liu, a Chinese American artist who elevated the marginalized people of both her homelands — an impoverished mother, a desperate immigrant, an unseen laborer — in massive works of portraiture that transcended national boundaries, died Aug. 7 at a hospital in Oakland, Calif. She was 73.
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Honoring the Past With Art And Tears With a style of ‘weeping realism’ often based on photos, California-based Hung Liu evokes the crucible of China’s Cultural Revolution →
Honoring the Past With Art And Tears
With a style of ‘weeping realism’ often based on photos, California-based Hung Liu evokes the crucible of China’s Cultural Revolution
As a teenager in 1960s China, Hung Liu knew that family photos could be dangerous. During the Cultural Revolution, having an elite or educated family background could lead to prison, and Ms. Liu was the granddaughter of a scholar; worse, her father had fought against the Communists. So family members saved a handful of pictures and burned the rest. Diaries, too, went up in smoke.
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The Sun on the Edge, 2021 →
I wanted to share with you a new public project in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Sun on the Edge is a site-specific sculpture commissioned by the City of St. Petersburg for a roundabout in the EDGE District as part of a neighborhood revitalization project.
Best Gallery Exhibitions Summer 2021, From Salon 94 to Nancy Hoffman Gallery →
As the art world speeds to reopen in the midst of vaccinations happening nationwide, it seems that this summer will be the summer of the gallery. Gallery exhibitions, both solo and group, have always held a special place in the arts world as a place to discover emerging artists as well as appreciate long-term art world darlings. Summer 2021 across the country galleries open (or continue business as usual in the case of some) desiring a robust return of visitors to the art we love. It is of course, dizzying in a world of so much artistic talent to choose what gallery shows you wouldn’t want to miss yet we found a way.
“Joy Fields” works by Nicole Phungrasamee Fein at Nancy Hoffman Gallery (until July 3)
Till July 3rd “Joy Fields” at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will display Nicole Phungrasamee Fein’s watercolors on paper, showcasing Fein’s masterful control over the medium. Fein’s dedication to her craft is obvious in the gorgeous exploration of color and being, reflecting themes that span her two-decade career. “Joy Fields” will evoke soothing understanding yet emotional depth in viewers, who will not want to miss an exhibition of Fein’s work in New York City.
Hung Liu Appointed Artist Tustee at San Fancisco Museum of Modern Art
Artists and Creatives Took to the Streets of New York for a ‘Wide Awakes’ March to Get Out the Vote Sarah Cascone, October 5, 2020 →
After months spent sheltering in place, the art world was out in full force on Saturday, gathering in sites across New York and cities across the country for the Wide Awakes march. The activist event, which was at once a cry for justice, a joyful celebration, and a push to get out the vote, also marked an important, little-known moment in US history.
On October 3, 1860, the original Wide Awakes, an abolitionist organization formed to help elect Abraham Lincoln, staged its biggest event, with 10,000 people marching through the streets of Chicago.
Today’s Wide Awakes marches are the brainchild of artist Hank Willis Thomas, who has adopted their symbol of an unblinking eye and caped uniforms to the needs of 2020. The initiative is an outgrowth of For Freedoms, the artist-led political action committee he founded with Eric Gottesman in 2016.
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