Lin Yuanhua, Guangzhou, 1995
Zhang Hai'er
张海儿
Production date
1995
Object Detail
Media
digital C-type print
Measurements
100 x 67 cm
Notes
The cross-dressers in Zhang Hai’er’s photographs from the mid-1990s perform femininity and seduction in large prints characterised by highly saturated colour and theatrical lighting. Their bodies emerge from moody chiaroscuro; pale gleaming skin, lustrous silk and satin underwear, and glittering costume jewellery create a sensuous tactile siren song of desire and longing. You imagine a disco beat echoing through the hotel rooms, perhaps a touch of Donna Summer and ‘Bad Girls’ — in fact ‘Bad Girls’ is the title Zhang gave to this series. Lin Yuanhua, Guangzhou 1995 (1995), for example, stands against a roughly pinned-up bed sheet with arms raised behind her head in a pose familiar from countless oil paintings of female nudes, and thousands of pin-up and fashion photographs. Her red leather dress is unbuttoned, revealing a shadowy hint of underwear and gingery under-arm hair. She looks out at us from under a black headscarf fringed with gold tassels, her dark eyes and her gaze — is it flirtatious or defiant? — as well as her pose deliberately echoing the central, sharp-elbowed woman in Picasso’s 1907 depiction of the Barcelona prostitutes of his youth.
Accession number
2014.113