Hung Liu has to be one of my favorite painters right now.
Born in China in the 1940s, Liu came of age during Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. As a young woman, Liu was sent to labor in a remote village and learn a distorted account of Chinese history as part of her "reeducation." Four years later, she trained as an artist in Beijing, where she was taught to paint in the Social Realist style so that she would be able to serve the state by making colossal mural paintings of Mao and other prominent members of the Communist Party.
In 1984, after years of working as an artist and teacher in China, Liu immigrated to the United States and began making paintings informed by a wider perspective on her nation's history. Her work was enhanced when, during a 1990 visit to China, Liu discovered several hundred photographs from the time of the Cultural Revolution. These photographs have formed a basis for much of her work since. Personal photos from this era are rare because families often destroyed images that might be used as evidence that they were not proletarians.
Here are some interesting links.
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