Shuqin Cui

The Pregnant Nude and Photographic Representation

Until recently unprecedented or considered “impossible” in the Chinese art tradition, the female nude, especially the pregnant nude, has become an intimate, controversial subject in women’s art practice.1 Why the pregnant body emerged as a subject, how it has been articulated, and how one can interpret representations of the pregnant woman are central concerns in this article. The concept of the nude and its absence in the Chinese art tradition is a contested topic in art history. Viewed from a Western perspective, Chinese art has traditionally shown scant interest in the nude as subject or medium. One explanation is that Chinese art originated apart from the Greek tradition and its emphasis on the essence of form and eternal beauty, arising instead from a belief in energy transformation and internal coherence. John Hay, for example, observes that East Asian art provides “very few examples and no obvious tradition of representing the nude.” He asks, “Why does the body seem to be almost invisible in a figurative tradition that flourished for over two thousand years?”2 To continue the exploration, I argue that the absence of the nude results not only from the different orientations of art traditions in the West and China but also from gender hierarchies and sociocultural conventions evident in perception and representation. This article first examines how Yu Hong’s Witness to Growth and Xing Danwen’s Born with the Revolution use the pregnant body