Flipping through a magazine: The consumed and consuming ‘woman’ in contemporary Chinese art

The turn of the millennium marked China’s full engagement with globalized capitalism, the fulfilment of the contemporary turn in Chinese art and an increase in representations of women and female bodies in contemporary Chinese art. The ‘consumed and consuming’ body had arrived in China via, amongst other means, glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines. This article produces a comparative textual analysis of two artworks, the single-channel video installation Yue Jing Jing, (2002) by Chen Lingyang and the photographic installation Summer, (2009) by Yang Zhenzhong. Both artworks feature glossy women’s magazines. The two works will be compared in how they represent ‘women’, and the question asked, what do the differences in the artists’ treatment of the female body and glossy magazines suggest about gendered subjectivity?