With the advancement of feminist movements, women have gradually broken free from singular image frameworks. Female expression is no longer merely passive, gazing objects, but has become an act imbued with subjectivity. They have begun to narrate their own experiences, bodily sensations, emotional fluctuations, and states of being. These expressions do not seek to conform to established standards, but rather continually expand the boundaries of “what constitutes female experience”.

Lin Tianmiao, i-mpression(detail), 2024, Mixed materials on paper, size variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

During my visit to artist Lin Tianmiao’s solo exhibition There’s No Fun in It! at the Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum, the work i-mpression (2024) left a profound impression. Through an intensely personal, introspective lens, the artist engages with themes of illness, ageing, and life’s resilience. Eschewing grand narratives, the work originates from individual experience, translating bodily sensations and emotional memories into visual language. This mode of expression moves beyond emphasising past stereotypes, returning instead to authentic, complex, and irreplaceable life experiences.

As curator Pi Li emphasises, Lin Tianmiao’s focus is not on proving women can be as accomplished as men, but rather on exploring gender experiences inaccessible to men. These include bearing life, enduring illness, observing one’s own body, and understanding familial roles. Lin transforms these perceptions into art, manifesting a distinct and self-aware feminine consciousness.

I aspire to curate an exhibition centred on the theme of ‘female expression’. My aim is not to present a singular, unified image of womanhood, but rather to showcase diverse, individualised and embodied modes of expression. By emphasising difference, feeling, and irreplicability, I wish to avoid reducing women’s experiences to fixed paradigms once more. The curatorial aim is not primarily to counter stereotypes, but to refocus attention on women’s own lived experiences. By presenting authentic, concrete female experiences, stereotypical imaginings cease to serve as the central reference point, naturally losing their explanatory power as these experiences unfold. Women are no longer merely objects of gaze, but enter the artistic narrative as narrators, perceivers, and subjects of experience.

Thus, the significance of this exhibition lies in providing a space where women’s experiences are seen, understood, and respected. Through art, audiences gain access to realms of experience often overlooked, suppressed, or oversimplified, re-examining the relationships between the body, emotion, and gender. Here, women need not prove their worth. Experience itself becomes the source of meaning, thereby exerting a gentle yet persistent loosening of established cultural structures.

An interview with Lin Tianmiao. The Art Journal, “Between the Lightness and Weight of Life, What Else Is ‘Fun’? Her Answer Was ‘Art’.,” Theartjournal.cn, 2025, https://www.theartjournal.cn/archives/exhibitions/142034.