Issue:
652 Date: 02/20/2003
Victoria Lu presents: Perfect Couples - Wedding in the Air
Perfect Couple: Crossing Boards, Fu Shen and Victoria
Lu
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Victoria Yung-Chih Lu was born in Taipei, Taiwan. Her education includes the College of Chinese Culture, Taipei, Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, California State University, Fullerton (BA 1985), and the California State University, Los Angeles (MA 1989). Lu has recorded the development of contemporary art throughout Taiwan and China through her own work as an artist, curator, and art critic. Writings include "Visions of Pluralism-Contemporary Art in Taiwan 1988-1999" and her most recent publication in Shanghai is entitled, ˇĄPost Post-Modernism in Art". Lu is an Associate Professor at the Shih-Chen University, Taipei, and Visiting Professor at the Shanghai University.
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In Chinese tradition, a woman shall marry once and be devoted to one man. Moreover, she is expected to adhere to the proscriptions found in "The Three Followings and the Four Virtues," first described over two-thousand years ago during the Han dynasty. Her status is to "follow" her father before marriage, her husband during marriage, and her son upon the death of her husband. Throughout her lifetime, she is to cultivate "women's moral virtues," "women's speech," "women's appearance," and "women's work."
Breaking these traditions, Victoria Lu portrays a contemporary Chinese woman's dream wedding ˇV by marrying one hundred husbands. This serial of her performance/photography, created in cooperation with Mickey Chen, contains twelve photos of couples in different ceremony settings. After her third marriage, conceived of this idea to show the world that any couple can be seen as perfect, just as they are; no one really cares about the truth of a happy marriage in every wedding ceremony. People can only hope and dream about happy endings in any given relationship.
Inspiration for this project comes from Victoria's life experience. She was born into a traditional family with origins in Shanghai. Her mother was the 11th daughter of 17 children - mostly girls. Born in Taipei, she immigrated to the United States after her first marriage. She has been always very sensitive about gender issues because of her family background. In addition, she became aware of the feminist movement in art as a student in southern California in the early. Making frequent trips to Taipei in the late 1980's, Victoria eventually established herself as a leading art critic in Taiwan, as well as having become very active as a supporter of feminist movement there.
 

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