女 Chinese Women

16 avril 2025 - 20 juillet 2025

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The exhibition 女 Chinese Women delves into various aspects of the lives of women in Chinese culture, evoking through a selection of poems written by women the tensions inherent in their status. The visit begins with a presentation of their traditional depiction in art, from the evolution of beauty standards embodied by funerary figurines of the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the hieratic portrait of an elderly lady of the Qing (1644-1911), an anonymous witness to ancestor worship in China. Beyond the country’s borders, a certain image of the Chinese woman reached Europe through export porcelain, and spread there as an idealised model in the Chinoiserie of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and François Boucher (1703-1770).

The second section is centred on a magnificent wedding bed of carved and gilded wood, symbolising that crucial moment in a person’s life that represents marriage. In a centuries-old patriarchal society, numerous decorative motifs relate to marital bliss, fertility, and the desire for male offspring. The importance of marriage, whether experienced as an obligation or as a happy union, is widely echoed in literature, notably through the well-known classic Story of the West Chamber (Xixiang ji 西廂記), frequently illustrated on ceramics.

A third section explores women's ornaments and attire, but also deals with the painful practice of foot binding, a form of mutilation considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. The fourth part is dedicated to female deities who provide special protection to women and children, as well as popular beliefs related to childbirth. The exhibition closes with the works of several women painters from the Ming period (1368-1644) to the present day. Dong Xiaowan 董小宛 (1625-1651), the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧 (1835-1908), Ling Shuhua 凌書華 (1900-1990), as well as the artist Peng Wei 彭薇 (born in 1974), each tell, in their own manner, a tale about the status of women.