Panel Four - Self-fashioning
Self-fashioning: April 7th, 2pm - 3:35pm EST
Crafts and art-making as sites of identity construction allow us to continually reformulate our ideas of belonging and selfhood. This panel explores the role of adornment and costuming in asserting female identity in a variety of settings—from the tomb to the theater stage to the river bank—and reveals a range of desires, from being remembered a certain way to making a stage costume a daily habit. By calling upon diverse materials from China and Central Asia, this panel’s presenters explore poignant moments of female self-fashioning and subjectivity from before the common era to the twentieth century.
Panel Discussant: Fan Zhang, Assistant Professor Asian Art, Tulane University
Self-fashioning
Petya Andreeva (Assistant Professor, The New School) - "Zoomorphism as Elitism in Nomadic Women’s Tombs: Constructing Female Agency on the Eurasian Steppe (700 BCE-200 BCE)"
The whole tree design discussed in this paper refers to a particular fashion style in which the shape of a costume is treated as a canvas. A complete single tree or a cluster of assorted plants is arranged on the garment according to the sections of the torso, shoulders, and arms. The tree roots often start from the edge of the front of a garment, the tree trunk occupies the main section of the front, branches extend to shoulders and sleeves to constitute a holistic representation of a plant. When someone wears such a garment, the wearer’s body is embraced within the tree/s. The anatomical body of the wearer beneath the attire coincides with the trunk and branches on the clothing. The surviving garments, fabrics and textual sources suggest that such design was already used on theatrical costumes during the Qianlong period. Scholars have discussed extensively the long-established tradition of the analogies of human beings and vegetation and anthropomorphism of plants in Chinese ancient literature, philosophy, visual arts, and religions. However, the inquiry on the materialization of the allegorical meaning of the image of nature in relation to embodiment has been understudied. In this paper, I will first trace the historical development of this new fashion design in both theatrical costume and daily dress. I will address the questions such as how is the wearer’s subjectivity expressed through such an individualized, holistic, and theatricalized form? How is such a new style intertwined with different notions of body and nature as China transitioned from empire to nation-state?
Michael Norton (PhD Candidate, Harvard University) - “‘Thereby water loses its nature:’ Fu Fei and Cosmology in Gu Kaizhi’s The Goddess of the Luo River”
The Goddess of the Luo River is perhaps one of the most well-known works of early Chinese painting, its treatment of the ill-fated romantic dalliance of the eponymous river nymph and a prince ingenious in its consideration of both vision and space. Moreover, scholars have often emphasized the prince's role as the narrative protagonist of the work, the identity with whom the viewer is meant to sympathize. At the actual center of this work, however, is the water goddess, a figure whose very existence implicates cosmological thinking, and her interactions with the prince by extension the political and social consequences of the communion between man and nature. By re-centering the nymph and her affinity for the element of water, this paper reinterprets The Goddess of the Luo River through a consideration of the painting's environmental overtones, demonstrating that water and its association with political folly were at the heart of this fourth century composition. Furthermore, in placing the painter's artistic choices within the socio-political landscape of the Jin dynasty, the presentation unveils connections to the power struggles and intrigues of the era.
“Wearing a Whole Tree: A New Way to Display Subjectivity?”
Yuhang Li (Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Wearing a Whole Tree: A New Way to Display Subjectivity?”
The whole tree design discussed in this paper refers to a particular fashion style in which the shape of a costume is treated as a canvas. A complete single tree or a cluster of assorted plants is arranged on the garment according to the sections of the torso, shoulders, and arms. The tree roots often start from the edge of the front of a garment, the tree trunk occupies the main section of the front, branches extend to shoulders and sleeves to constitute a holistic representation of a plant. When someone wears such a garment, the wearer’s body is embraced within the tree/s. The anatomical body of the wearer beneath the attire coincides with the trunk and branches on the clothing. The surviving garments, fabrics and textual sources suggest that such design was already used on theatrical costumes during the Qianlong period. Scholars have discussed extensively the long-established tradition of the analogies of human beings and vegetation and anthropomorphism of plants in Chinese ancient literature, philosophy, visual arts, and religions. However, the inquiry on the materialization of the allegorical meaning of the image of nature in relation to embodiment has been understudied. In this paper, I will first trace the historical development of this new fashion design in both theatrical costume and daily dress. I will address the questions such as how is the wearer’s subjectivity expressed through such an individualized, holistic, and theatricalized form? How is such a new style intertwined with different notions of body and nature as China transitioned from empire to nation-state?
