Women artists flourish in Taiwan during past two or three decades with their remarkable and respective achievements. Juin Shieh, as my colleague for many years, provides me appreciative opportunities to witness her artistic maturation. Graduated from New York University renowned for its strict training and cultivation on both art theories and creative works, Juin always tried her balance between the two and realized its mutual significance. While during her apprentice in U.S., Juin was no doubt influenced by current woman studies and related thought, which put emphasis on “self independence” (equality movement), on “active sexual determination” (body discourse) and on “assertion of alternative subject” (flexible identity and creativity) in turn. Juin thus led her way criticizing patriarchal rational thought (Anatomy series, 2000), reflecting on the richness of maternity (including Floating in the Chora--a Remark on Pregnancy series, 2003, Chora series, 2005 and Maternal genealogy series, 2006) and exploring the particular feminine aesthetics of “Creativity under Constraint” (Immanence series, from 2010 till now). We receive therefore those incessant fruitful results both from her research and her creation.
In earlier works, Juin enjoyed her pondering on contrast between archetype of female body and hardness of a screw nail, for example, “Born to be” (P.37) or “Not necessarily”. She might feel discontent with those common treatments of juxtaposing female body with melons or flowers. Instead, Juin always turned feminized laced satins frequently into some vigorously lined hair bundle, reel strings or muscular tendon, as to dissolve patriarchal binary oppositions between the masculine and the feminine, for example, as in “Steak” (fig. 3). We could see here her arrangement of elements has some quality of a humorous pun similar to Jacques Lacan’s idea of floating signifiers or the deconstructive différance proposed by Jacque Derrida. For them, the signifying process itself would produce derived forms in generating new meanings endlessly.
After the pregnancy and birth of her daughter, Juin closely attuned herself to that authentic nurturing experience. On the one hand, she disclosed patriarchal maternal requirements always pretended as “divine”, yet hiding true exploitations. On the other hand, Juin maintained patient records by creative works for detailed mother-daughter interactions, similar to what Mary Kelly did in her Post-Partum Document. In contrast with Nancy Chodorow’s assertion that fathers should share child-rearing duties, Juin would put her emphasis more on her free attending with Chora. Through reactivating archaic myth to figure out the maternal genealogy, Juin tried to add new values to this amplified maternity. In “Chora” , a shadow-projecting video interacting setting, Juin would like to prospect not only female but “every participant could return his/her own shadow back unto this maternal body.” Though it might bring us some tint of idealization, we feel certain that only through this status of “not yet” could we inspire people toward some positive utopia. For Juin, maternal constraint for sure could also be one kind of marching songs and never to be devalued as in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), in which females doomed to be body-producing machines in a dystopia totally dominated by patriarchal authority. In a way, Juin not only substantiated the truth by action that “one would be stronger while becoming a mother”, but would stuff its dignity with essential content.
Besides the endeavoring of paintings involving treatment of maternal experience with all subtle motherdaughter interactions for many years, Juin absorbed fully fresh nutrition from academic interdisciplinary studies on contemporary thought, literature and cinema. She tried to digest and integrate works by three prominent French female thinkers (i.e. Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray) including their feminine theories of Écriture féminine, Chora, Maternal Genealogy etc. and assimilated such gender reflections into her own creative works. What is more surprised like a marvel was her solo exhibition “Immanence” (2010) which featured her viewpoint of “creativity under constraint”. By drawing and erasing of the charcoal pencil, Juin kept her images between clarity and vacillation, chattering her feminine desires under constraint and outstretching their productive force of “différance”. For example, Juin explains, the “Resting” (fig. 1) “depicts two opposing and squatting legs crossed in main part of the composition.... Each leg finds no support in distorted and tensional manner⋯as a ritual of mutual feeding for the lack of each other, when some abstract desire meets with mirrored mood from their secular world.” I think we might also refer this painting as well to suppression from some feminine domestic labor (ex. squatting to wipe the floor), even her “Resting” might also imply some self-sarcasm of no alternative choice available.
But on the other side, inclusion of flower and rattan motives is a remarkable feature in Juin’s latest paintings, for example, as in “Flowered flowers” (P.125), “Wrapping within wrapping Ⅳ ” (f.100) and “Invalid Flight Plan Ⅱ”(P.119). They might be, in a way, influenced by C.P. Gilman’s short fiction The Yellow Wallpaper, which based on the author’s personal experience taking “rest cure” after some postnatal depression. The fiction depicts a claustrophobia mother facing her delusions. It could also be seen as some silent protest against miserable life of a common woman. Juin’s works expressed feminine will to explore the world and question those obstacles set to constrain her. However, the foresaid work “Resting” has another merit: Despite Juin’s usual treatment of headless and fragmented body, we could see also some consolidated “informed” body (the association of a lump), or some winding system in spiritual meditation with a hidden heart form. This might indicate some new energy or self-rallied potentiality generated even by such constraint. To sum up, it could remind us that feminine self-defense or resistance while her life being dismembered by our patriarchy. And this work “Resting” indeed explores its pictorial ambiguities like a polylogue resonant with its utmost richness.
Beside the multi-leveled signification of an image, Juin also stressed that: “our feet could stamp on two boats, one masculine and the other feminine. Your true assertion is to maintain balance on both⋯ if “constrained as to create” ⋯ I feel satisfied, in fact⋯ this creativity under constraint⋯” This might correspond with what Julia Kristeva proposed once a “polymorphous” gender or the argument by Michel Foucault: “Where there is power, there is resistance.” Feminine resistance of our patriarchy could not operate from outside and could subvert, hollow out or redefine it from within. With tenacity, women always could find out comfortable ways toward self-healing, even where the trauma exists.
As a woman artist, Juin is always conscious of and responsive to contemporary art development. We could notice also in her works some elements of un-tied reason and spontaneous brush as evidenced in Abstract Expressionism after World War Ⅱ . Juin brings further concrete images yet not fixed in definition, similar to some revival of concrete figuration and defacing strategies by works of Francis Bacon. As the latter concerns more on human existential solitude, Juin seems not to abandon somehow the belief of genuine human relations, even though such relations might suffer like some sturdy grass under strong winds, for example, as in “Settle Down” (P.123), or some delusional transformation of leaves or grass into wings, as in “Between the Uncultivated and Overcrowded Zone” (P.134). Although Da Vinci’s flying dream being realized today, most women remain being warned and doubt their capacity under some fear of possible falling like Icarus, as in “Invalid Flight Plan Ⅴ” (P.102). But to elevate a small fish egg metamorphosed to make a roc’s free and unfettered flight, as proposed by Zhuangzi could also be one prospect of feminine jouissance, so that no one could deny such flexibility indicates also additional feminine talent and her cherished aspiration.
The independence and contribution of feminine creators has forced us to meet with an époque that male artists might find their possible embarrassment. This is not a result only out of the challenge of woman art during past decades, but also a coming fact that male artists often lack the drive for persisting struggle and the fervor for investigating their living paradox and suppression, as shown by women artists. Simon de Beauvoir once reminded that it is necessary for a woman to hold her destiny on one’s own hands. But she could find no way to avoid the dilemma for choosing the role of a mother or a writer. Women in our time have more fortunate chances, however, to win over social equality, though they still could not disregard totally the domestic responsibilities from our patriarchy. Women now could exhibit, nevertheless, their potentialities for fulfilling not as what they “should” be, but as what they “could” be.
When I saw Maya Deren’s Meshes in the afternoon (1943), an avant-guard short film, I felt much impressed by its all prevalent postmodern qualities (including splitting of subject, time-space overlapping, dialectics between the conscious & the unconscious, collapsing of the grand narration) which surpassed its contemporary works done by male hands. However, as its heroine could only return to her house in compulsory repetition despite attracted by outer world, she could do nothing but look through window at such enticement and find end by cutting short her life in madness. Today women do demonstrate greater self confidence for their outer exploration. It would be our cultural loss if art history continues its negligence toward works by feminine hands. Women artists move their way often not in a remarkable way. But we learn very well the story and the forthcoming winner of the race between turtle and rabbit.