Some contemporary female artists are actively challenging and diverging from the entrenched notions surrounding women’s intellectual capacities, showcasing a different trajectory in their works, methods, and artistic paths. Their reflections on surrounding phenomena and their relationships, as well as speculative thinking of abstract relations, have become increasingly direct and explicit. These practices primarily unfold in the broader field of plastique, where the objects being shaped encompass not only real, natural, man-made, or ready-made things, but also abstract relationships, such as the interplay between human and object, object and space, material and perception, image and language, and so forth. Therefore, they bear a clear consciousness of traditional sculpture’s role in shaping objects and their forms, while also retaining a vital connection to the body and even life for an expanded space and relationship shaping. It is thus not a coincidence that abstract speculative thinking and reflection on relationships serve as guiding conceptions and methods for their creative works. While employing different media, these artists share a common concern for the life experience and relationships brought forth by the objects’ being and their forms. The object is not mere content, but also functions as language and grammar. Plastique inevitably involves reflection on more abstract power dynamics and states of being, which along with bodily experiences, endows creative works with complexities. Importantly, the association of these artists with gender awareness is not solely because they are all women. Their works suggest a form of feminism that is subtler and internalized, no longer declarative or oppositional, but rather confronts universal issues regarding human perception, life, and being. Their approach reflects a more inclusive awareness and working methods that transcend gender boundaries.

Whether in everyday contexts or professional discussions, women and everything associated with women have long been considered as distanced from capacities for speculative and abstract thinking and profound reflection. Characteristics such as calmness, contemplation, or high speculative capacities, when attributed to a woman, are often considered compliments. However, the subtext implies that the woman has transcended the limitations imposed by her gender, advancing to the intellectual high ground predominantly held by men, breaking away from a certain perceived natural state. This deeply ingrained notion continues to persist. The late nineteenth century Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger introduced the concept of henid to define the mental characteristics of women as a type of psychical content that has not yet evolved into concepts and thoughts. He believed that women are only capable of emotions and sexuality, lacking the capacity for high-level speculation. While such views are considered ignorant and absurd today, the underlying notion of henid looms in the public subconscious. Women are still often believed to face more restrictions in entering the realms of speculation and abstraction compared to men. This perspective extends to female artists, who, despite the creativity of their work, are not exempt from such generalizations. They are frequently used as examples to reinforce these clichés: being expected to be more sensitive, more inclined to express emotions, and more deeply confined in the myth of henid. Similar to the public imagination of Muses, female artists tend to be associated with mystery, sensitivity, and elusiveness, rather than clarity of thought and intellectual prowess.

Some contemporary female artists are actively challenging and diverging from the entrenched notions surrounding women’s intellectual capacities, showcasing a different trajectory in their works, methods, and artistic paths. Their reflections on surrounding phenomena and their relationships, as well as speculative thinking of abstract relations, have become increasingly direct and explicit. These practices primarily unfold in the broader field of plastique, where the objects being shaped encompass not only real, natural, man-made, or ready-made things, but also abstract relationships, such as the interplay between human and object, object and space, material and perception, image and language, and so forth. Therefore, they bear a clear consciousness of traditional sculpture’s role in shaping objects and their forms, while also retaining a vital connection to the body and even life for an expanded space and relationship shaping. It is thus not a coincidence that abstract speculative thinking and reflection on relationships serve as guiding conceptions and methods for their creative works. While employing different media, these artists share a common concern for the life experience and relationships brought forth by the objects’ being and their forms. The object is not mere content, but also functions as language and grammar. Plastique inevitably involves reflection on more abstract power dynamics and states of being, which along with bodily experiences, endows creative works with complexities. Importantly, the association of these artists with gender awareness is not solely because they are all women. Their works suggest a form of feminism that is subtler and internalized, no longer declarative or oppositional, but rather confronts universal issues regarding human perception, life, and being. Their approach reflects a more inclusive awareness and working methods that transcend gender boundaries.

Hu Xiaoyuan’s recent works exemplify this direction. In her earlier installations involving wood, silk, and embroidery, she already explored the presence of objects and their relationships with the surrounding space. Yet her approach then was largely mimetic, with a referential world and narrator-creator. All possible languages, structures, and relations emanated from this particular creator. Over the past five or six years, her practice has gradually departed from this mode of expression and narration. The perspective has become more universal, with the narrator appearing omnipresent but eluding precise identification. The materials she shapes, whether wood, steel wire, silk, thread, or marble, have not undergone significant changes in their inherent forms, but seem to have entered a more expansive theater of existential relationships (as seen in exhibitions such as “The Sand From the Urns”, 2021; “Paths in the Sand”, 2022). She displays more explicitly the connections among the lives of these objects and forms, emphasizing their relationships with conscious and psychical realms. This exposes a process of inference and reflection, rather than narration and expression. Born in the late 1970s, Hu Xiaoyuan’s shift in creative work aligns with the broader transformation seen in female artists in China and globally. Earlier feminist creations often had predetermined points of focus, such as established narrative structures tied to the body (physiological and bodily symbols or emotional stories), or metaphors through specific media and forms (fabric or needlework, symbolic representations of gender, etc.). The use of objects in female artistic creation overall was figurative and representational. However, these recognizable characteristics have become less explicit in the latest works by female artists. Instead, there is a trend toward greater abstraction of objects and the removal of their metaphorical and symbolic meanings. Hu’s works from different periods clearly illustrate these changes. While her visual vocabulary has become more mature and precise, it also reflects the broader shift in the creative language of female artists.

Su-Mei Tse, who is half Chinese and grew up in a mixed European-Asian cultural background, emerges as a representative figure in this evolving artistic shift. Her works illuminate a generation of artists who came of age at the turn of the century and received highly intellectualized and institutionalized art education. Tse distinguishes herself in her use of the abstract power of language and the ordered arrangement of sensations, derived from her experience as a cellist. She is proficient in transforming invisible relationships, such as rhythm, memory, and the flow of time, into visible entities shaped by time and space. Another key strand in her work is the interweaving and reconstruction of diverse cultures, leading to a cross-cultural and universal grammar of shaping. While she employs different media for her work, their shared underpinnings are her experimentation with shaping the psychological and spiritual domains of human existence (Many Spoken Words, 2009–2017). Another artist who stands out in her ability to shape memory and sound is Yang Chi-Chuan, originally from Taipei. As a storyteller, sculpture and installation maker, and writer, she crafts scenarios that intersect different objects, events, and spaces. She often starts with specific and personal things, but ultimately adjusts to a mellow reflection on the surrounding world (Plastonki, 2020). The warm and gentle undertone is not deliberately utilized by the artist as a generalized signifier of femininity, but rather opens up an internalized space for contemplation. Chen Zhe is also highly skilled in switching between text, image, and space. Compared to her earlier works that laid bare the metaphor of the body and its pain, her recent works increasingly analogize these expressions: the macrocosmic imagery of the universe as the microcosmic experience of the flesh, the mythical time scale as the constant flow and change of the present moment, the materiality of objects as words and phrases, dreams as reality. (Reading Old Dreams series, 2020–2021; You are a Circle, Expanding, 2022–2023). Her unique ability to fictionalize extends beyond storytelling, continuously traversing generative relationships between objects, images, and words.

Several artists are dedicated to exploring abstract shaping from a more conceptual standpoint, which involves deeper reflections on behavior, language, and socio-political spaces. One highly representative figure is Nabuqi. Her recent works have transitioned from handmade sculptures to the shaping of an ever-expanding site largely from ready-made objects. She transforms her peculiar sensitivity to materials and relationships into playful situational games, infusing her shaping of objects and relationships with a sense of action. The space shaping in her works is not merely contemplative, but facilitates the occurrence of discourse and conceptualizations through reflections on established boundaries and the shaping of semantic disconnections (exhibition “Everything Goes Back to Square One”, 2022). Another artist who directly shapes social spaces and everyday behaviors is Hu Yinping. Adopting the alias Xiao Fang, she has long played the role of an intermediary who orders knitted hats from her own mother and aunts in her hometown. While the final visible works of this long-term project are a diverse array of knitted items, the deconstruction and reshaping of social identities and relationships that happened in the process of production and exchange are the invisible forms of this series of works (exhibition “Hu Yinping: Weaving Realities”, 2022). The story and actions of Xiao Fang serve as both a fictitious performance and a shaping of real relationships and social networks. In contrast, the works of Zhong Yunshu, based in Shanghai, bear a more pronounced imprint of urbanized life. Her simultaneously micro and abstract perspective arises from the pervasive sense of information fragmentation and boundlessness in contemporary daily life. She regards all objects—whether material or immaterial, organic or inorganic, be they artifacts, people, or words—as equal floating entities. By weaving new relationships and orders among them, she then places into it her own understanding of the world (exhibition “The Quick Brown Fox Leaps over the Lazy Dog”, 2020). Zhong’s works are clear and composed, reflecting her heightened sensitivity to language and trust in instrument procedures gained through systematic training at contemporary art academies. Yet it is in no way contradictory to her profound perceptiveness of details in life.

Furthermore, even though the process of urbanization in Tier-1 Chinese cities approaches its end, the self-reflection arising from the drastic tremors caused by the external environments that individuals have experienced remains a subject of particular interest for artists. Notably, In contrast to earlier stages of urbanization and globalization, where artists often relied on specific events for storytelling, contemporary young artists take a more abstract, problem-oriented perspective. Detached from concrete plots, they directly question the existential circumstances encountered in individual lives. Yu Ji’s work represents this abstract perspective. She uses cement, metal, and wood to construct theatrical spaces of objects devoid of coherent plots. Entering her exhibition space is akin to entering a text filled with words and phrases. The focus lies in the connections and ruptures between the spaces created by the objects, and the oppression and indulgence of bodily perception imposed by external space (exhibition “Forager”, 2020). The connotation of sculpture in her works is tangible and concrete, as the fracture and incompleteness of forms always aim to increase the entropy between relational existences rather than terminate them. Zhang Ruyi is also adept at exposing objects’ being and their fragile and mutable relationships. She also had training in sculpture, but she places a greater emphasis on procedures than the forms created by hands. The insistence on methodology not only lends her work a rigorous and restrained quality, but also drives her to explore inwardly. Zhang’s attention in recent years has consistently moved toward the constraints, conflicts, or contradictions encountered in life, and all related reflections are brought out in the processes of probing these relationships (exhibition “Speaking Softly”, 2022). In the works of the younger artist Yibei Zhang, the tension between the precise and the ambiguous, the concrete and the abstract, is also evident. While she repeatedly emphasizes that what she creates are sculptures, she attempts to redefine a broader sense of sculpture through abstract relationships between concepts, visuals, and materials. The tangible world of stones, metal, and silicone only exists as a reference for these abstract relationships (Sinster, 2020).

The transformation observed in the works of these contemporary female artists is not solely attributable to generational factors. Instead, it is a complex phenomenon that goes beyond generational divides. Hu Xiaoyuan’s works demonstrate the inherent complexity of this transformation. One must comprehend whether external social and temporal contexts have indeed posed different questions to artists in different periods, and prompted them to make structural changes in language and concepts. A group of Chinese female installation artists active in the 1990s, for example, are remarkable at transforming their personal life experiences and their symbols into artworks. Their use and shaping of objects often have specific symbolic or metaphorical implications. Imagery or symbols of the body are often involved, and their expressions of memory, emotions, or the female condition are straightforward and sometimes even radical, as can be seen in early representative works by artists such as Yin Xiuzhen, Lin Tianmiao, and Shen Yuan. These characteristics resonated with the global feminist movements and artistic practices of the 1990s, while embodying a distinct local flavor too. Chinese contemporary art then was still largely underground. It was influenced by the ’85 New Wave movement, and followed by the sweeping changes of globalization and urbanization. This context propelled a creative practice to smash political and cultural taboos, characterized by its vitality, impact, and a distinct feminist attitude. In comparison, after the 2008 Olympics, China has experienced profound social changes. The structure of urbanized society has formed and begun to solidify, and the once small field of contemporary art has grown into a legitimate and institutionalized space. Artists in general enjoy a relatively lenient creative environment, and there is less reliance on direct bodily experiences or overt metaphorical imagery as a means to challenge external restrictions. Additionally, the expansion of systematic art education at universities and the popularization of artistic concepts and theoretical discourse have led to a recent trend toward increased intellectualization and internalization in contemporary art practice. This shift includes a growing emphasis on speculative consciousness, abstract language, and unprecedented attention to certain ontological issues. At the era’s turning point, we also see the works of the aforementioned female artists, across generations, turn their focus to the shaping of objects and their existential relationships. Yin Xiuzhen’s recent glass works (Ripple Stress series, 2021–2023) and Lin Tianmiao’s solo exhibition at Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum ("Systems", 2018) also manifest the transformation of abstract consciousness and internal language. The abstraction and speculation discussed here, are fundamentally a matter of deconstruction. It involves not only the aesthetic deconstruction of external figurative meanings, but also the formation of a feminist creative practice that moves beyond explicit feminist labels, thereby directly addressing more universal issues of human existence. (Translated by Zhao Wenrui)