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C. Lai Art History Honors Paper .pdf (29.57 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Artistic Agency, Feminine Labor, and the Female Body in Buddhist Hair Embroideries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Lai, Chloe Y
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8634-5277
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1654989373335065

Abstract Details

2022, BA, Oberlin College, Art.
Hair embroideries were an entirely female and Buddhist practice in late Imperial China, and thus operate within the bounds imposed on women by societal structures of economy and labor, and moral expectations of Confucianism and Buddhism. This was not a common practice and mostly limited to a few gentry women already connected to the art world through their husband or father (an already small demographic). Recent scholarship on Chinese Buddhist hair embroidered works by the art historian Li Yuhang analyzes them as objects of religious devotion and ritualized practice that involves repetition and incorporating the body to accumulate karmic merit, a core concept of Mahayana Buddhism. I study them both in the religious context and an added layer analyzing them as art objects to explore to what extent women possessed and exercised artistic agency in Buddhist hair embroideries. I explore the medium, iconography, and technique exhibited in the embroidered works that demonstrate artistic choice and innovation of technology.
Bonnie Cheng (Advisor)
Andrew Macomber (Committee Member)
Matthew Francis Rarey (Committee Chair)
66 p.
Art History; Asian Studies; Religion
Hair-embroidery; Buddhism; Gender; Technology; Guanyin

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lai, C. Y. (2022). Artistic Agency, Feminine Labor, and the Female Body in Buddhist Hair Embroideries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1654989373335065

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lai, Chloe. Artistic Agency, Feminine Labor, and the Female Body in Buddhist Hair Embroideries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties . 2022. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1654989373335065.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lai, Chloe. "Artistic Agency, Feminine Labor, and the Female Body in Buddhist Hair Embroideries of the Ming and Qing Dynasties ." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1654989373335065

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

oberlin1654989373335065
148
© 2022, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.