Stand By Her: art exhibition, periods and females during the pandemics
By Olivia Wang
Female subjectivity has become more popular a topic since the rise of feminist movements in the last century. Feminists in different areas try to get rid of the male gaze and voice up from women’s point of view. Female artists focusing on women’s experiences and feelings contribute a lot to female subjectivity development.
It is heartening that the feminism awakening is not limited to Western society. Feminists in China are making incredible progress in voicing up women. From Nov 1 to Nov 25, 2020, Stand By Her, an art exhibition co-curated by feminist activist Liang Yu and female writer Zhu Yujie in China, is putting on display in 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai. The exhibition features art pieces by 12 female artists in different forms, including painting, sculpture, installation art, and performance.
Liang Yu is also the founder of a gender advocacy organization, “Stand By Her”: the same name as the exhibition.
Since the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak in mainland China, Liang has attracted public attention on menstrual problems during the particular time by speaking out about the lack of sanitary napkins of female frontier medical staff. She raised a sanitary napkin donation project in the name of Stand By Her, which led to an unusual online discussion on period-shaming in Chinese social media, mainly in Weibo.
Period and other bloody topics related to women’s life in China are featured in Stand By Her. From the visualization of the unavoidable menstrual experience, the audiences get an immediate impression of the pain, struggles, and unnecessary embarrassment that most women felt but never talked about it publicly.
Woman Series · IUD is an art piece by Zhou Wenjing. It consists of around 300 intrauterine devices (IUD), the commonly used contraception method in China under the one-child policy. The metal texture of IUD: cold, sharp, and shiny, shows a strong contrast with the dark blue velvet background.
“Sometimes, I think art is resonance,” said Liang on her Weibo. From the exhibition, She wishes to inspire the audiences to think about females' private feelings, which are easily neglected or regarded as taboo. Liang wants to recall their collective memories of the female audience. The sense of female integrity is a significant pursuit of contemporary feminists.
Another attempt Liang made in building female integrity is a sanitary napkin sharing box project. Same as the napkin donation project, the sharing box project is also advocated in Weibo.
Female students in middle schools and universities set plastic boxes in the woman's lavatory rooms for putting menstruation products in. Ideally, women in need — those who during their menstrual period but don’t have a napkin with them — can take one from the sharing boxes for emergency use and refill the box later when convenient.
In early 2021, along with a cold winter, new waves of COVID-19 outbreak took the lack of sanitary products among female medical practitioners back as an issue in mainland China. Liang and her team are currently using their experience and connections during the past year to help females in Hebei Province in need.
