PART II | DECEPTIVELY TRADITIONAL: THE ILLUSORY RADICALISM OF FAN XIAOYAN’S CYBORGS
FAN XIAOYAN &
PHYSICAL ATTACHMENT
One artist who has visualized the body-machine relationship in physical form is Chinese sculptor Fan Xiaoyan (figure 12). Fan was born in 1983 in Gaomi, Shandong Province, China, and is a contemporary multimedia sculptor. For her final project in art school, she strove to explore the idea of the cyborg in physical form. Her sculpture series Physical Attachment (2008) (figure 13-16), is a compelling experiment in cyborg art. In the only English paper written on the series, scholar Shuqin Cui views the works through a historical lens, arguing that it represents a feminist challenge to the treatment of the female body in relationship to machines in socialist and post-socialist China. However, I reach a different reading by interpreting Physical Attachment in the context of Japanese anime, which has had a massive impact on the popular culture of East Asia more generally. In this section, I will examine the female cyborg form present in Fan Xiaoyan’s series within the context of the sexualized female form present in anime, which was more likely the visual inspiration for the work. From this perspective, it becomes clear that Physical Attachment is an attempt to critique the treatment of the female body but actually replicates the objectification of the female cyborg body present in anime. The series is superficially subversive without any deep commitment to subversion, and therefore cannot be interpreted as a feminist work of art. Rather, it reinforces traditional ideas, placing female bodies in a sexualized, objectified, and vulnerable role.
Physical Attachment is a series of four multimedia sculptures that Fan completed around the time she graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2008. In a 2021 interview, Fan Xiaoyan claimed that she was inspired by the inferior status of female labor and women overall in contemporary China when making this series.[67] She stated that the machine attachments and weapons symbolize women’s efforts to make up for their perceived deficiencies (especially physical weakness) and become “powerful women.”[68] Each sculpture combines the nude female body with stainless steel mechanical attachments that extend and/or transform the organic body. The bodies these supplements attach to are both recognizable as human bodies and have been drastically modified. The shape of the bodies is clearly human, the surfaces are painted naturalistically to resemble organic skin, and the figures have human heads, faces, and hair. They also exhibit gendered characteristics, including breasts, delicate facial features, and soft and curved figures. And yet they are also distanced from the organic human body; none of the figures have organic hands or feet, and gears and tubes sprout from within them. They are humans who have been made into cyborgs through bodily modification.
Some of these attachments are recognizable, like chainsaws, hammers, guns, and shovels, while some are more generically mechanical-looking, though they are all the same shiny silver material. Stainless steel, a material often used for monumental modern architecture, has been associated with modern technology and efficiency since the early 20th century.[69] With its highly polished and reflective appearance, stainless steel gives an aesthetic impression of the modern, futuristic, and technological. Fan’s use of this material implies both an aesthetic and practical consideration: not only are these attachments futuristic, and in a way beautiful, but also they are made of a material known for its durability and strength. This relates to Fan Xiaoyan’s previous statement that the mechanical attachments strengthen the female body; the strength of the material is related to the perceived strength of the “improved” female body. Alongside the associations with technology and strength, steel (and metal more generally) is historically associated with masculinity in Chinese culture. Therefore the strengthening of the female body through technologized, stainless steel attachments is akin to the “technological phallicisation” of the sexualized female body as described by Kuo.
Figure 12: Photograph of Fan Xiaoyan, from Xuehua News.
Figure 14: Fan Xiaoyan, Physical Attachment-02, 2008. Stainless steel and mixed materials.
Figure 12: Photograph of Fan Xiaoyan, from Xuehua News.
One artist who has visualized the body-machine relationship in physical form is Chinese sculptor Fan Xiaoyan (figure 12). Fan was born in 1983 in Gaomi, Shandong Province, China, and is a contemporary multimedia sculptor. For her final project in art school, she strove to explore the idea of the cyborg in physical form. Her sculpture series Physical Attachment (2008) (figure 13-16), is a compelling experiment in cyborg art. In the only English paper written on the series, scholar Shuqin Cui views the works through a historical lens, arguing that it represents a feminist challenge to the treatment of the female body in relationship to machines in socialist and post-socialist China. However, I reach a different reading by interpreting Physical Attachment in the context of Japanese anime, which has had a massive impact on the popular culture of East Asia more generally. In this section, I will examine the female cyborg form present in Fan Xiaoyan’s series within the context of the sexualized female form present in anime, which was more likely the visual inspiration for the work. From this perspective, it becomes clear that Physical Attachment is an attempt to critique the treatment of the female body but actually replicates the objectification of the female cyborg body present in anime. The series is superficially subversive without any deep commitment to subversion, and therefore cannot be interpreted as a feminist work of art. Rather, it reinforces traditional ideas, placing female bodies in a sexualized, objectified, and vulnerable role.
Figure 14: Fan Xiaoyan, Physical Attachment-02, 2008. Stainless steel and mixed materials.
Physical Attachment is a series of four multimedia sculptures that Fan completed around the time she graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2008. In a 2021 interview, Fan Xiaoyan claimed that she was inspired by the inferior status of female labor and women overall in contemporary China when making this series.[67] She stated that the machine attachments and weapons symbolize women’s efforts to make up for their perceived deficiencies (especially physical weakness) and become “powerful women.”[68] Each sculpture combines the nude female body with stainless steel mechanical attachments that extend and/or transform the organic body. The bodies these supplements attach to are both recognizable as human bodies and have been drastically modified. The shape of the bodies is clearly human, the surfaces are painted naturalistically to resemble organic skin, and the figures have human heads, faces, and hair. They also exhibit gendered characteristics, including breasts, delicate facial features, and soft and curved figures. And yet they are also distanced from the organic human body; none of the figures have organic hands or feet, and gears and tubes sprout from within them. They are humans who have been made into cyborgs through bodily modification.
Some of these attachments are recognizable, like chainsaws, hammers, guns, and shovels, while some are more generically mechanical-looking, though they are all the same shiny silver material. Stainless steel, a material often used for monumental modern architecture, has been associated with modern technology and efficiency since the early 20th century.[69] With its highly polished and reflective appearance, stainless steel gives an aesthetic impression of the modern, futuristic, and technological. Fan’s use of this material implies both an aesthetic and practical consideration: not only are these attachments futuristic, and in a way beautiful, but also they are made of a material known for its durability and strength. This relates to Fan Xiaoyan’s previous statement that the mechanical attachments strengthen the female body; the strength of the material is related to the perceived strength of the “improved” female body. Alongside the associations with technology and strength, steel (and metal more generally) is historically associated with masculinity in Chinese culture. Therefore the strengthening of the female body through technologized, stainless steel attachments is akin to the “technological phallicisation” of the sexualized female body as described by Kuo.
[67] Guo Xi, “范晓妍: 曲而不折的生命力「竹之韵」[Fan Xiaoyan: The Unbreakable Vitality ‘The Charm of Bamboo’],” Zhihu, June 2, 2021, https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/377512086.
[68] Guo, “Fan Xiaoyan: The Unbreakable Vitality.”
[69] Leroy Gardner, “Aesthetics, Economics and Design of Stainless Steel Structures,” Advanced Steel Construction 4, no. 2 (2008): 3.