Portraits of Promised Lands

The first portraiture retrospective for Hung Liu opens August 27 at National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

- JOHNO’ HERN

Hung Liu was born in China in 1948 in the regime of Mao Zedong. In 1966, having endured many hardships under the regime, she witnessed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution when she was about to graduate from high school.

She recalls, “Suddenly, overnight, the revolution had started. I saw these Red Guards, who had been very modest, even shy girls, friendly and sensitive, who studied hard, and who respected their teachers, transformed into demons. They used a belt to beat people and even set up a detention center at school.” The Red Guards were to purge Chinese society of Western influences.

Two years later, she was sent to work among the peasants in the countryside in Mao Zedong’s “re-education” program. She worked in the fields seven days a week for four years. She filled sketchbooks with drawings of her co-workers and had also smuggled a camera in with her.

When schools began to reopen, she studied art, eventually applying and being accepted at the University of California, San Diego in 1981. The Chinese government refused her bid for a passport, however. In 1984 she was granted a passport, left for the United States, and began her graduate studies at UCSD.