WOMEN'S RIVER 2005
Aimin Tao/陶艾民
1974-
Wooden washboards; fishing lines; light
Dimensions Variable
Unframed & mounted
Copyright: Aimin Tao
Aimin Tao is a Chinese female artist who is good at combining installations with oil paintings and videos, using ready-made products and folk art techniques. Her works often explore the personal history and daily life of rural Chinese women.
"Women's River" is the first installation work created by Aimin Tao. She collected 56 washboards from the rural and urban-rural junctions and painted portraits of their owners on them. These women come from different nationalities, ranging in age from 30 to 99 years old. A lamp is installed above the washboard to illuminate the work and produce the light effect of water. The light is constantly flowing, and the whole work is like a long river with the washboard floating above it. Since there was no washing machine in the past, every Chinese woman used a washboard to wash clothes for her family. The washboard used by Chinese women for a long time appropriately represents the history of Chinese women. The shape of the river brings a sense of history and destiny to the audience. These washboards symbolize Chinese women from ancient times to the present. They seem to have the same mission and destiny, but each has a different story. Even though the role of women has been fixed in history, their contributions have been forgotten by history, and this work vividly records the images of these women and constitutes a long river of women's history.
#Aimin Tao
#Rural China
#Oil painting
#Metaphorical
#Multilingual expression