Performance of Genders: Marking Masculine/Feminine Identities through Body and Calligraphy

Abstract

In performance art, the body becomes a means of orientation and placement and a medium of social experience. Being a combination of 4 elements (time, space, artist’s body and the relationship between artist and public audience), the “body in act” reclaims one’s subjectivity through signifying gestures against cultural homologation, reactivating the alienating pragmatism of everyday life. Calligraphy, like performance art, focuses on physical execution, which is the materialization of the physical power of the artist and on the dynamics of momentum. The focus is on the artist’s action with the involvement of the artist’s body in a processual and spontaneous (but not unplanned) manner, and the act of writing is a mode to reaffirm the subjectivity of the calligrapher. Because of all these similarities between performance art and calligraphy, several contemporary Chinese artists are trying to interconnect these two forms of art into innovative artistic practices. Among them, we selected four artists (Sun Ping, Zhang Qiang, Echo Morgan, and Wu Xixia) that use calligraphy in performative actions in order to convey new conceptions related to gender (and) identity. Through the analysis of their most important works, this paper aims to explain how the use of calligraphy within the performative act reveals three significant socio-cultural themes: 1) the use of the body: the body is an active agent that expresses the self through the act of writing and related movements; 2) the question of gender: calligraphy is used in the sense of gender as a symbol of masculine power over women (i.e., Sun Ping and Zhang Qiang) or as a symbol of the feminine (i.e., Echo Morgan and Wu Xixia); 3) the definition of identity: calligraphy is related to the question of identity as a symbol of Chinese tradition and culture and able to implement a contemporary reflection on gender identity.