The first time I saw Guo Zhen’s work was at the 2018 “Qingchao Project” women’s art exhibition, curated by Ailei’er at Zero Space in 798. When I walked into the exhibition space of her works, into that matrix composed of resplendent breasts, I was enveloped by a powerful aura and profoundly shocked. Such a viewing experience is rare; I have seen many exhibitions both at home and abroad, including many by masters, yet very few have evoked this feeling in me. Many works only please the eye, but cannot strike the heart directly.
I have always believed that art, like language, is a medium for transmitting information and energy, and can also be seen as a materialization of the human spiritual world. A work preserves all the codes of a person’s existence and inner world, as well as the dimensions reached through his understanding and insights of this world. The impact of a work depends on the amount of information and energy it transmits, as well as the dimensions it reaches.
After that exhibition, I continued to follow her work and read some of her writings on feminism. Later, I had the opportunity to meet her; we participated in exhibitions curated by each other, which provided more opportunities for mutual exchange.
During the 2020 pandemic, when she was in the United States and unable to return to China, she organized a second “Existence” – an international women’s art exhibition – online, inviting female artists from around the world to participate (the first was held in Changsha, Hunan, in 2018). She also founded an online Zoom forum, inviting feminist artists and scholars to give a series of lectures, including Professor Wang Zheng from the University of Michigan; Professor Shen Rui from Morehouse University; and Researcher Zhang Hongping from the Chinese Academy of Arts, as well as some other female artists, including myself.
On one occasion, Guo Zhen gave a lecture about her art and her life, and I served as the host. It was then that I truly understood everything she had experienced and the evolution of her work. Guo Zhen was born in Shandong, and she naturally carries certain characteristics bestowed upon her by that region: simplicity, richness, and all the virtuous qualities of a woman shaped by traditional culture. At the same time, she possesses outstanding talent and resolute character. She was among the first group of students admitted to the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts after the Cultural Revolution, and was the only female student in that cohort, studying Chinese painting. Due to her excellent performance in her field, she was retained as a teacher after graduation and married a fellow teacher. Her husband later became a highly renowned and successful artist in the art world, while Guo Zhen lost herself in that marriage.
In the late 1980s, they went to the United States together. Her husband seized every opportunity to pursue his ambition of achieving worldwide fame through art, while Guo Zhen devoted all her time and energy to her family, abandoning her artistic ideals and struggling for a living every day. She fulfilled the role of a virtuous wife in Chinese traditional culture to the extreme—sacrificing herself and wholeheartedly supporting her husband. But in the end, she was heartlessly abandoned. It was only after an incident of domestic violence that she gradually became clear-headed and began to rethink her life.
After years of inner torment and struggle, as if experiencing a war within her own world, on the ruins of defeat she had to rebuild another inner world. This world is different from the previous one; she had to abandon all the concepts and perceptions she had acquired over half her life, completely shattering the self that was trapped in traditional culture.
Under the influence of the cultural and artistic environment in the United States, and with her extraordinary artistic sensibility—especially drawing from her own wounds—Guo Zhen produced an artistic creation completely different from her previous work: the Breast Series. She collected various colored fabrics and silks, meticulously hand-sewing them into individual breasts. Then she assembled these breasts to form large-scale installation works. The works are massive in scale, with intense colors, giving a powerful visual and psychological impact.
Breasts, in the cultural history of humanity, are one of the most typical symbolic signs. Breasts stand for the mother; the mother signifies nurturing, and nurturing means providing the food necessary for life. This also means humanity’s reliance on the female breast. Humans, whether man or woman, depend on the nourishment provided by the female breast.
Breasts are one of the oldest and most primitive totems. In the Paleolithic era, the breast was a divine abode—a sanctuary where humans could live and find protection. Therefore, early human carvings and iconography were filled with images of large or multiple breasts. Breasts provided food for humans, just as nature gives fruit, serving as sustenance. They signify the origin of life. A prime example is the iconic prehistoric sculpture—the Venus of Willendorf. Her breasts are enormous, almost occupying the entire upper body, while her facial features are completely neglected. From this sculpture, we can see that the definition and aesthetics of women at that time were completely different.
Venus of Willendorf
In the later stages of clan society, the status of women gradually declined, which also signified the rise of patriarchal civilization—the very patriarchal society we have long criticized. This society is characterized by violent struggles for power, the implementation of a hierarchical system, and the domination of a minority over the majority. Patriarchy signifies the downfall of matriarchy. Women lost their early sacred status and became the slaves of men. Early female deities were completely replaced by male gods: Zeus in ancient Greece; Jesus in the Bible; Shakyamuni in Buddhism; Muhammad in Islam; all the supreme rulers in these myths and religions are male. Goddesses were either eliminated or relegated to a completely negligible status. Women, once represented by the Great Mother Goddess symbolizing maternity, became servants in the household and objects of sexual desire. They were confined to the home, existing only to bear children, perform domestic labor, and serve their husbands. They were forbidden from participating in social and cultural creation, and barred from public affairs. Moreover, patriarchal society wove a discourse that belittled women to shatter their confidence. Women were completely subordinate to men.
In China’s two-thousand-year imperial culture, women have always referred to themselves as “slaves,” which also reflects their position in this society. Women were under the authority of their fathers at home and of their husbands in marriage; they did not have their own surnames, property, or inheritance rights. They were confined to the inner chambers, and even subjected to foot-binding, rendering all women disabled for life, stripping them of independence and forcing them to become subordinates to men. Moreover, the Confucian classics, which dominated the social ideology, rigorously disciplined women’s virtues from childhood, taming them into becoming servants to men. This is the typical patriarchal society criticized by feminism.
Chinese Footbound Women
After the emergence of patriarchy, the meaning of the breast underwent a complete change, evolving from a symbol of maternity to a symbol of sexual desire. From ancient Greek mythology and sculpture, we can see the complete transformation of the female image. The goddess Venus, for example, is entirely different from the robust, full-breasted, and ample-hipped Venus of Willendorf of earlier times, becoming the most typical figure of desire shaped under patriarchal culture, even captivating her father Jupiter. In countless classical paintings depicting her amorous scenes with various male gods, she is portrayed as a female body subject to the male gaze. Her breasts are rendered delicately and compactly, no longer as organs for nurturing, but as organs for viewing and arousing fantasies.
Guo Zhen’s Breast Series works are like a modern reenactment of an ancient multi-breasted totem. Row after row, column after column, the breasts resemble countless bountiful fruits—the sustenance that nature provides for humanity. The brilliantly colored breasts, with their uninhibited and passionate postures, interpret the stance and embrace of a mother. The mother—like the earth—opens up to life and bestows upon humanity the power of endless vitality. These breasts completely subvert the shyness and reserve imposed by the male gaze, the delicacy and gentleness, and instead display confidence, strength, robustness, and brilliance.
In “Sandbags,” she made giant sandbags out of breasts. This work emerged as a form of self-release through boxing after the pain of marriage. Every time she struck the sandbag, it was a questioning of her own life. She combined breasts and sandbags—a dual combination of something soft and something hard. As the sandbags, which people hit, are wrapped in breasts, their inherent hardness is transformed, becoming soft and imbued with warmth. Walking among the breast-sandbags suspended in the air, people instinctively reach out to touch those breasts. This allows them to experience a bodily warmth, a call from an ancient mother goddess. In this work, the breast no longer represents fragility, but incorporates an indestructible strength. The work envelops the forms symbolizing masculine power and the phallic worship of patriarchal society with breasts symbolizing a matriarchal culture, thereby nullifying all the connotations of the sandbag as a patriarchal symbol.
Afterwards, Guo Zhen combined the element of the breast with her abstract ink paintings to form a unique painted installation. On those abstract ink works, reminiscent of primal forms or the vast, ancient earth, breasts emerge one after another. The work seems to merge maternity with the earth, presenting a magnificent visual scene symbolizing the nurturing and sustaining of life.
In another painted installation, she used her own ink painting as a background, and in front of the painting she used colored light tubes to create an upright triangle and an inverted triangle, with the two triangles together forming a stable structure. The triangle is often used as a metaphor for the intimate parts of the female body; in Judy Chicago’s iconic work “The Dinner Party,” the table is also triangular. The two triangular light formations seem as if the light of femininity is rising from the chaotic earth and gradually illuminating the world.
Throughout the trajectory of Guo Zhen’s artistic development, her early works demonstrated skilled techniques and a strong sense of form. Later, her ink paintings, influenced by the innovative currents of the 1980s, made significant breakthroughs, pushing her ink work toward abstraction. Even now, if her work were placed among the male artists of that era, it would still rank among the best. However, those works were ultimately constrained by the inherent limitations of the ink medium. It was only with the emergence of her Breast Series that she finally released her talent and freedom, and the mode of expression and artistic language that belonged solely to Guo Zhen emerged.
From Guo Zhen’s self-narrative, I see that the trajectory of her life and art run parallel. When the traditional Chinese views on love, marriage, and life that she had adhered to collapsed in a failed marriage, she experienced a level of despair and pain that few others could endure—that was a spiritual metamorphosis through life and death. When she slowly rose from the ruins of collapse, she was like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, becoming a brand new self—a woman both light and profound; clear and filled with sharpness. She remains magnanimous and compassionate, but now her compassion is not directed toward any one man; it is dedicated to all women who have suffered under the yoke of patriarchy as she did. She transformed from that traditional Chinese woman into a complete feminist, and feminist thought laid the foundation for her Breast Series.
Guo Zhen’s experience is not an isolated case; it is the common fate of countless Chinese women. She repeatedly recounts her experiences, again and again bearing witness for women through her work, reshaping the maternal symbol that had been erased by patriarchal society; providing a critical example against distorted gender notions. Her work is like a modern matriarchal totem, constructing a sacred dwelling of maternity, and offering spiritual strength and sanctuary to all women confined by traditional culture and deeply harmed by it.
October 4, 2021 Li Xinmo