Trial from Hostages? Scar Art and the Break of History

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the artistic images and sexualized artistic subjects in Chinese scar art works represented by Father, The Maples and Youth, etc., changed with state ideology in the early 1980s. This paper points out that art works always “exist” in the society, so they are not only text waiting for interpretation, but also the carrier and object of social practice. In the process of subjectification, narration and representation of the gender differences consolidates the existing symbolic order unconsciously. On this basis, the paper further explores the close relationship between the artist subject and the mainstream ideology of the country in shaping and referring each other. Frederick Jameson vividly called the 1960s as the “Long 60’s”. The Cultural Revolution in China was undoubtedly an important component and representative event of the great “Global 60’s”. As a reflection and rebellion against the collective experience of the Cultural Revolution, a series of avant-garde art movements emerged in the early 1980s in Chinese Mainland, which are regarded as the origin of Chinese contemporary art by the academic circle. The cultural and political nature behind this trend is just as Li Xianting, an art critic, puts “The revival of art is not a revolution of art itself, that is, language paradigm, but a movement of mind emancipation [1].” From the perspective of historical witnesses, Li points out the main axis of artistic ideology that runs through the post-cultural revolution era. “All of these are driven by a rebellious mentality, and the core of the change is social consciousness and politics [1].” Li’s point of view reminds us that the beginning of Chinese avant-garde art is closely related to the change of state ideology. The vicissitudes of national destiny and the turning point of national history have become part of the artist’s personal life and memory, which not only possesses individuality, but also possesses collectivity and constructs the cultural and political subject of the 1980s dialectically and interactively.