Inscribing Sinoscape: Script and Representation in Post-Mao Chinese Art, 1985-Present

WANG, YIJING (2023) Inscribing Sinoscape: Script and Representation in Post-Mao Chinese Art, 1985-Present. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the conceptual and material dimensions of artists’ physical acts of inscribing in transcultural representations between and among East Asia, Europe, and the United States since the 1980s. After China’s reopening to the outside world after the Cultural Revolution, numerous Chinese artists moved to foreign countries to pursue artistic opportunities, within which a group of diasporic artists produced a wide array of inscriptive spectacles deploying unconventional material forms and media, in their specific inscriptive embodiments to articulate their social critique and cultural identity in response to different spaces and audiences. Based on my working relationship with these living artists, my dissertation investigates this global landscape in which these artists generate inscriptive surfaces, represented in concrete visual, material, and aesthetic terms from indigenous traditions as specific scripts, writing styles, typographies, and their material carriers: talismans, scrolls, sutras, and steles. I trace the underground genesis of this art in the ’85 Art New Wave to its emergence in the global Conceptualism movement, a major turning point in late twentieth-century art in which art shifted from a consideration of the object to that of the idea. Inscribing Sinoscape offers the first rigorously transcultural and trans-media studies of this artistic phenomenon that cuts across the usual China-West divide and puts its finger on the pulse of an ongoing supranational art circuit. Drawing from an unusual array of archival sources, I challenge the traditional link between national identity and script and aim to transform how Chinese script is perceived under the contemporary conditions of new media technologies, interculturality, and global mobility.

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Details

Item Type:	University of Pittsburgh ETD
Status:	Unpublished
Creators/Authors:	Creators Email Pitt Username ORCID WANG, YIJING YIW83@PITT.EDU YIW83
ETD Committee:	Title Member Email Address Pitt Username ORCID Committee Chair gao, minglu Minglu@pitt.edu Committee CoChair savage, kirk ksa@pitt.edu Committee Member shirin, fozi SFOZI@pitt.edu Committee Member claudia, brown Claudia.Brown@asu.edu
Date:	15 November 2023
Date Type:	Publication
Defense Date:	4 March 2022
Approval Date:	15 November 2023
Submission Date:	7 April 2022
Access Restriction:	2 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 2 years.
Number of Pages:	132
Institution:	University of Pittsburgh
Schools and Programs:	Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > History of Art and Architecture
Degree:	PhD - Doctor of Philosophy
Thesis Type:	Doctoral Dissertation
Refereed:	Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:	contemporary art
Date Deposited:	15 Nov 2023 16:12
Last Modified:	15 Nov 2023 16:12
URI:	http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43047

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