Half the Sky
September 23, 2011
Half the Sky: Women in the New Art of China, an important exhibition of Women Chinese artists, will be at The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery from Friday, September 23rd to Saturday, November 12th. Co-curated by the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and the Pearlstein Gallery, this survey-scale exhibition will be the first of its kind in the United States. More than 60 pieces of artwork by 22 women artists, including painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation, will be on display. There will be an opening reception on Friday, September 23rd from 6 to 8 PM at the new Leonard Pearlstein Gallery (3401 Filbert St.).
A select group of Chinese dignitaries and artists will attend the opening reception including Fan Di’an, Director of the National Art Museum of China; Yin Xiuzhen, an internationally acclaimed artist who represented China in the 2007 Venice Bienniale and was featured at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010; and artist Cui Xiuwen, a world renowned photographer. Xiuwen’s work has been featured in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums, including London’s Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum.
Despite the recent interest in contemporary Chinese art, the wave has bypassed many deserving women artists, painting an incomplete picture of China’s cultural transformation. It has been decades since Mao Zedong set communist ideology by proclaiming that women “hold up half the sky,” and yet Chinese women artists have yet to command the full attention of the international art world. Half the Sky attempts to redress this by representing a cross-section of gifted women artists currently working in China and across the Chinese diaspora. The exhibition will be free and open to the public, Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 AM to 5 PM.