Queer eye for Chinese women: Locating queer spaces in Shitou’s film Women Fifty Minutes

Hongwei Bao

doi:10.1386/jcca.6.1.77_1

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of Chinese lesbian artist, filmmaker and activist Shitou’s 2006 film Women Fifty Minutes (nüren wushi fenzhong). Focusing on the representation of queer women in the film, I discern the existence and conditions of queer subjectivities and spaces in a postsocialist Chinese context. This article aims to disentangle different discourses of women and feminism in contemporary China as represented in the film and, in so doing, unravel the importance of sexuality in understanding feminism and women’s experiences. By looking at Chinese women through queer eyes, Shitou’s film brings queer public space into existence through representational and activist strategies; it also introduces sexuality and queerness into feminist debates.

Highlights

This article offers a critical analysis of Chinese lesbian artist, filmmaker and activist Shitou’s 2006 film Women Fifty Minutes
Art critic Huang Zhuan (2008) considers Shitou as one of the most outstanding female artists in contemporary China and notes how her ethnic, gender and sexual identities may have had an impact on her artworks: Her nuanced visual treatment of Chinese queer women in particular has given her a unique place in contemporary Chinese arts
Shitou’s experience as a member of the marginal artists in the early 1990s at Yuan Ming Yuan, together with her later nomadic experience in Northwest China and her belonging to an ethnic minority in China, have all contributed to the delicacy, sophistication, and humanity of her artistic touch

Summary

Introduction

This article offers a critical analysis of Chinese lesbian artist, filmmaker and activist Shitou’s 2006 film Women Fifty Minutes (nüren wushi fenzhong). Keywords Shitou Women Fifty Minutes women queer film art China Hailed as ‘one of the most outstanding female artists in contemporary China’ (Dixon Place 2018), lesbian artist, filmmaker and queer activist Shitou uses films and artworks to explore bold and intimate issues such as gender, sexuality and identity.

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