The art displayed in this post comes from deaf artists, who are graduates of the Shandong Provincial Rehabilitation and Career School, an institute in China that trains young Chinese with disabilities.
In 1949, Mao Zedong launched the People’s Republic of China and ruled with an iron fist for almost three decades.
During Mao’s time, there was almost no free artistic expression in China unless the art served the propaganda needs of the state. But today, that has changed.
Zhang Guoli, Sons
After Deng Xiaoping opened China to a global market economy, the post Mao generation was introduced to Western art and theory.
Huang Jinpo, Earth
It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that art from China started to emerge.
This is the dormitory where the artists live.
The photos in this post are presented with permission from “Embracing the Uncarved Wood, Sculptural Reliefs from Shandong, China“, which was made possible by a generous grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and with assistance from the Office of the Provost of Franklin & Marshall College. ISBN: 978-0-910626-04-0
Discover Chinese Yu Opera with Mao Wei-tao
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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