When China-born, Australian-based oil painter Hu Mings backstory is

contrasted with her creative output (above), it feels as if the two are perfectly,
causally linked, each of her artistic idiosyncrasies directly attributable to a
specific event thats happened in her past. But the creative facility doesnt
actually work in that Slumdog Millionaire way, and what creative choice an art
critic ascribes to which part of an artists history is usually that critic, for lack
of a better analogy, painting an incomplete picture.
The faucet from which Hu Mings talent flows does not dispense anything that
can be fully encapsulated by writing. Below we look at one artists work, her
fairly innocuous intent, and the way that intent gets twisted, abandoned, and
fabricated by those who write about her art while holding their own
preconceived political and social biases.

Hu Ming was a comrade in Chinas Red Army for 20 years, where shed worked
as a regiment leader, a nurse, and an administrator for the propaganda
department. She had been part of an all female regiment, where she lived,
bathed, and slept next to the women of her infantry. She and her fellow
soldiers were intimate in a spiritual, psychological, and habit-forming way.
The female troops had no secrets, and were working through a period that
had never existed, and will never exist again. It was here where Hu Ming
began painting both the nude and clothed bodies of the women she lived
with.

Hu Mings time in the Red Army from ages 15 to 35 gave her a very distinct
perspective on gender equality. One promise of Chinas revolution was the

uprooting of the countrys deeply entrenched Confucian ethics, which

accepted the subservience of women to men as natural and proper.
However, Chinese culture would combat these antiquated codes of conduct
with a sharp u-turn into the other extreme, where standard-issue, gray or pine
green-colored, asexually-tailored garb desaturated and homogenized the coed
army into unity. In the new China, displays of sexuality or overt
femininity/masculinity stopped being condemned as symbols of moral
bankruptcy, but did start being condemned as symbols of bourgeoisie
hedonistic excess.
Many women who championed the partys gender inclusiveness actually
concurred with the ideals set by the partys leadersthat women, on top of
serving the military and doing manual labor, should additionally defeminize
themselves and mirror themselves to men as the paragon of gender
equality. In the army, Hu Ming recalled, it [was] considered as praise if any
female soldier [had] been regarded as a tomboy by the commanders.
During Hu Mings time of military service,
female farm hands and combat troops selected
their attire solely on the basis of functionality.
The common Chinese woman at the time was
given neither the means nor the
encouragement to flatter her own image
through fashion, or telegraph her individualism
with jewelry and apparel.

In the historical context given above, the

eyebrow raising qualities of Hu Mings work are evident. Sydney Morning
Herald art critic John Macdonald points out the eyebrow raising novelty of Hu
Mings srawings: Instead of the calloused hands and filthy clothes of hardworking peasants, these girls [in Hu Mings paintings] always look neat and
clean, and seem to have an ample supply of rogue and lipstick.

Upon seeing these images and learning of their creators past army service,
the minds of many westerners will automatically jump to terms like
rebellion, revenge against ideological guidelines or feminism to explain
why Hu Ming paints what she paints. But the difference between propaganda
and art is the difference between a corrupted ulterior motive to convince and
a pure internal impetus to present. Art is open to a viewers interpretation, but
propaganda is designed to strip a work of its affecting ambiguity. Hu Mings
whimsical inspirations and fascinations are reduced to cold agendas and
messages in the eyes of those do not make art--those who can only think
about creatives in the third person and not in the first.
Hu Mings personal views on politics or gender issues are only tenuously in
line with those of the people who write about her. She was once married to Ai
Duanwu, the brother of Ai Weiwei, and left China for Australia for the same
reasons why the Ai brother left for America to elude Chinas seismic cultural
shifts during a tumultuous period in the countrys history. But whatever
political subversive-ness has been ascribed to Hu Mings paintings of Chinese
female soldiers, it has certainly not barred her work from being displayed in
multiple galleries across China. Had she anything to else to say about her
home country, she could freely express it from her new home in Australia.

Hu Ming also firmly believes the sexes are equal and mutually penetrative in the
human creative thinking. However, when asked about her role in promoting new
female voices in the art world, even given her past experiences of having her own
femininity suppressed, she responded, The special and extra attention to female art
has always had the pathetic feelingI also dislike the idea of International Womens
Day. It is actually a declaration of women are weak.
The very sociopolitical ideals that have led to western journalists bringing
international attention to Hu Mings art are ideals that have little to do with her primal
incentives for painting. My original intention was not to display womens liberation or
historical revolution Hu Ming exhausts, exhaustedly, it narrows the coverage of
any artwork when political element is added, which shortens the vitality of the
artworks

Hu Mings oil paintings have also been featured in some

erotica anthologies, given a categorization she
appreciates but still doesnt fully comply with. Any
arousal prompted by her imagery is an ancillary effect,
amplified by the fact that in many parts of the modern
world, nude images of the female body are still inextricable
from pornography. Any instance of a woman donning a
revealing version of a traditionally modest uniform is
automatically put in service of the male gaze. The
painter insists that she is not influenced by the inyour-face, so-claimed erotic and pornographic images
that flood pop cultureimages that form the only
context in which many people can comprehend her
work. If in viewing the images in this article your
response is "but how could this not be erotica??" Then
you are one of the aforementioned people.

Hu Mings artistic goals are not immediately reducible to just courting lust. Even with
their see-through shirts and satisfied smiles, Hu Mings nudes evoke more Greek-ness
than gratuitousness. I have merged my army female images with Michelangelo's male
muscle to create [something] like a genetically modified person, she clarifies. I like
the beauties under my aesthetic frame. The beauty of women should not be just for
men, but also for women. Similar to the way a straight man can look admirably at the
sculpted build of a superhero without a feeling sense of titillation, a straight woman like
Hu Ming can find the sight of a well-proportioned, aspirational female body simply
pleasing to her eye.
When the film The Social Network was released, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
gave his input on whether he was accurately depicted in the film:
Basically the [films] framing is that the whole reason for making Facebook is because I
wanted to get girls, or wanted to get into clubs they (the film's creators) just can't
wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like
building things."
Similarly, Hu Ming paints what she paints because she wants to see it painted. Any
other conclusions drawn about her intent are futile attempts at tracing the shapeless
Muse; the human brains limited comprehension abilities forcing an ill-fitting causal
narrative over that same brains unlimited processing abilities.