This talk will be held on-campus and online as part of the Australasian Network for Asian Art program in 2026 - a link for online access will be provided after registering your attendance

What does it mean to be a woman artist – or a feminist artist – in China today? Analysing how Chinese women artists have reinvented traditional forms of ink and brush painting, Invisible Ink shows how the use of ink in their work becomes a tool of gender and art historical subversion in contemporary Chinese art.

The book explores how the work of Bingyi, Ma Yanling, Tao Aimin, Xiao Lu and Xie Rong invoke contemporary manifestations of the traditional Chinese form of ink and brush painting to explore themes of the embodied, gendered experience of Chinese identity, including: motherhood and daughterhood; the exercise of state control over fertility in the implementation of the One Child Policy; and the experience of menopause in a society that prizes youth and beauty.

Each chapter examines one artist, analysing carefully selected key works and drawing on interviews with the artists themselves. It positions the artists as intervening, not only in historically exclusive, elitist literati traditions, but also in contemporary art discourses in which their contributions have been similarly marginalised. It explores the ambivalent views of the artists towards (Western) feminism and positions their work as counter-hegemonic expressions of a specifically Chinese experience of patriarchy.

Addressing an understudied aspect of contemporary Chinese art, this book powerfully illuminates the material culture of ink and brush painting through a transcultural, intersectional feminist lens, revealing the ways in which the form bridges Chinese history and the present day.

Independent writer, researcher and curator Dr Luise Guest is currently a sessional academic at the University of New South Wales in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture. Her research about Chinese contemporary art has been widely published, including in The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Yishu Journal, TAASA Review and Art Monthly Australasia. Her first book, Half the Sky: Conversations with Women Artists in China, was published in 2016 by Piper Press, and her second, Invisible Ink: Feminism and Chinese Identity in Contemporary Art by Bloomsbury in January 2026.

The Australasian Network for Asian Art (an4aa) is a group of researchers including academics and curators from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand working in the field of Asian art and visual culture. The Network and its affiliated listserv serve as a platform to share research, promote events and exhibitions, foster a scholarly community, cultivate interest, and act as a vehicle for advocacy.

Contact the host of AN4AA Talks 2026 | Luise Guest | Invisible Ink: Feminism and Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art