Jen Liu

Jen Liu’s bodies of work cover paintings on paper, video, music and performances, which reflect her interest in propaganda, posters, and sloganeering. Her practice critically engages leftist abstractions and representations of power systems through research-based fiction and the reactivation of archival artifacts, often investigating the theme of the role of female labour in industrialisation. The Pink Detachment is a contemporary reinterpretation of The Red Detachment of Women (1970), a ubiquitous model opera ballet from the era of the Cultural Revolution in China. By adapting the original story of a peasant girl joining the revolution to the workstation of a female meat-processing worker in a hot dog factory, Jen Liu demonstrates the homogenisation of the gradually unremembered communism (red) by the newly capitalistic system of the bourgeoisie (white), which turns into a plea for labour rights in a liberal economy (pink). When capitalism becomes the reigning societal condition, the downside of neo-liberalism might reappear as an authoritarian order.

Jen Liu 的《Pink Slime Caesar Shift: Electropore》（2021-2022）通過四名黑人及亞裔女性「womxn」（中性替代詞）的不尋常工作經驗，探討性別、身份、勞工、抵抗等主題。該四名工人形成一個封閉的系統，組成一個千禧粉紅色的工廠。在 Liu 的影片中，四名女性皆被限制於狹小的獨立空間中活動。她們機械般工作，節奏規律始起彼落，無間斷的勞動教人麻木。她們進行了多次試驗，開發了一種質地類似啫喱的粉紅色黏液。這種黏液基於電穿孔技術。電穿孔技術是一種真實存在的基因修改方法，它可以將一些基因導入活的細胞，一種用於肉類種植實驗室中的技術。女工一邊工作一邊進食基因改造漢堡，成就了生產與消耗的周而復始的循環。通過影片中這個超現實的仿真世界，Liu 探究了勞動力中的不公義和剝削等議題。