Hung Liu
- Born
- Changchun, China
- Died
- Oakland, California, United States
- Active in
- Oakland, California, United States
- Biography
Hung Liu’s artistic training began in the Socialist Realist style of painting in the People's Republic of China, attending the Beijing Teachers’ College and Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 1984, she sought a way out of Mao Zedong’s communist regime and continued her artistic pursuits in the U.S. After studying with historian Moira Roth and artist Allan Kaprow at the University of California, San Diego (1984-86), Liu cultivated a conceptual approach that interrogated the complexities of history, political revolution, and displacement through painting-centered, multimedia works. She fostered deep connections to the San Francisco Bay Area arts community during her extensive years of teaching at Mills College (1990-2014) in Oakland, California. In 2022, the National Portrait Gallery held Liu’s posthumous retrospective exhibition, showcasing an extensive collection of her portraits that honored individuals overlooked amid social upheaval and largely forgotten by history, drawing on personal, historical, and archival sources.
Authored by Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art, 2025.
Exhibitions
