Associate Professor of Art History Stephen J. Goldberg presented a paper at the 37th Annual Conference of Mid-Atlantic Region Association of Asian Studies on Oct. 25. The title of his presentation was "The Past Ain't What It Use to Be: Trauma, Counter-Memory, and Parody in the Art of Post-Mao China."
Goldberg addressed contemporary Chinese visual culture as a contested terrain; at stake is arguably the reality of history and authenticity of memory under the threat of state-sanctioned manipulation and erasure. Who gets to choose what to remember and what to forget, what to pass over in silence, and what to obscure? This paper explored the "parodic inversion" of the art of the recent past, as a strategy employed by contemporary visual artists to address the historical and generational experiences of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Incident; the most recent in a seemingly endless series of traumas dating back to the mid-19th century.
Goldberg addressed contemporary Chinese visual culture as a contested terrain; at stake is arguably the reality of history and authenticity of memory under the threat of state-sanctioned manipulation and erasure. Who gets to choose what to remember and what to forget, what to pass over in silence, and what to obscure? This paper explored the "parodic inversion" of the art of the recent past, as a strategy employed by contemporary visual artists to address the historical and generational experiences of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Incident; the most recent in a seemingly endless series of traumas dating back to the mid-19th century.
