Remember This: Hung Lui at Trillium

 Chinese-born American artist Hung Liu (1948-2021) cut through Asian propaganda with deeply insightful portraiture and landscape. Faces float on Communist-red backgrounds and ordinary women appear after centuries of erasure. Liu was trained in Socialist Realism, but her mixed-media works are painterly and layered rather than flat and opaque like the blunt instrument of murals or posters. She remixed her childhood memories from Mao’s China to elevate the poor and those discriminated against, all in vibrant colors.