Year: 2022
Dimensions: 60 x 60 cm
Materials: card, tracing paper, ink, thread
Growing up, we are taught that the only way to learn how to write Chinese characters is through repetition. Endless tracings of shapes and stroke orders. Chinese characters are notable for their symbolic and pictorial nature. We may gather clues to the meaning of a character if it contains a ‘radical’, which represents a base association. Common radicals include sun, moon, fire, wood, water. Yet when we come to a ‘person’ radical, we find that there is a separate category for ‘woman’ but not for ‘man’. A separate way to categorise these ‘othering’ female traits and labels.
Reprising the role of a student, I wrote out all the characters that utilise the Woman Radical [女] (no. 38 in the Kangxi dictionary [康熙字典]), onto tracing paper taken from childhood practice books. Reliving every association: good, daughter, slave, beginning, grandmother, adultery, prostitute, evil… – the defining features of the female experience? A legacy passed onto each new generation, sealed and stitched down in red gridlines.
Exhibited in:
Take-Away (2024)
Lisha Zhong 