Modernity's End: Half the Sky, 2016

MODERNITY'S END
Incinerator Art Space, Willoughby, 2 March - 3 April 2016

Modernity’s End: Half the Sky presents the lives of Alice Lim Kee and Daisy Kwok, two Australian-born Chinese women who grew up in Australia before the women’s liberation movement, and during the White Australia Policy (1901-1973). The women migrated to Shanghai at the height of interwar modernity, rising to prominent positions in Shanghai society prior to the Japanese invasion and occupation in 1937. The title of the work contains half of Mao Zedong’s proclamation that “women hold up half the sky”, referring to the equal role that women would play in China’s Cultural Revolution, which in reality required women to perform the same work as their male counterparts in addition to family duties.

The combined images and drawings reveal the strength and resilience of the women, acknowledging their contributions to the transcultural histories of China and Australia, and the significant role Australian bicultural figures have played in shaping international histories. This exhibition also includes invited artists Cyrus Tang, Pei Pei He and Theodore Wohng.