Mediating Femininity, Identity, Materials in Modern China

Design and materiality mediate perception of identity by shaping the way people perceive social changes while analyses of designs illustrate critical insights in how identity politics are expressed through craftsmanship and creativity. This talk focuses on material agency as the key mediator and signifier of female identity and self-fashioning through exploring reactions to female emancipation and the resulted images of modern women that emphasize their increasingly visible and positive social presence in early twentieth century China. It discusses how modern women affirm their identities through ornamented designs on both natural and industrial materials that mediate their self-perception and enhanced social status. Modern design imparts a sense of respectability and good feelings to the modern woman while she introduces design, modern lifestyle, and taste as expressions of social progress. Ornamented design is a critical means to express good feeling because of its power to accentuate wealth and progress and to affirm social prominence of femininity. Photographs and advertisements that feature modern women as well as designs specifically created for women will be examined to reveal how ornamentation on specific materials articulate the pleasure of modern life. Rather than perceiving optimistic portraits of women as artificial and trivial, these images act as a communicative medium that plays a significant role in women’s identity formation, and in design and modern lifestyle created in early twentieth century China.