Beyond Gender

The Works of Li Xinmo

Ansel Smith

Feminist Theorist Li Xinmo has been one of the most vibrant Chinese contemporary female artists in recent years, born in the late 197’s in Heilongjiang Province, Yilan County. Her works primarily deal with issues such as gender, ethnicity, the environment and national politics, with a strong sense of immediacy. Hers is a tenacious oeuvre consisting of mainly video and performance works which are visually powerful as well as emotionally shocking. She has previously stated “I open my body and let them see my own pain” in reference to the way her work deals with suffering and death, and have strong overtones of ritual and tragedy.

Being a feminist theorist, she maintains the postfeministic artistic view that women artists need to move beyond gender and focus not just on their bodies, but on the existence of the wider world. She puts this theory into practice through her work.


In 2006, Li Xinmo and her collaborative partner, Zhang Minjie conducted extensive research on a Guangxi gold mine. In a local village, many of the mine -workers had contracted Silicosis. Silicosis is caused by inhaling large quantities of dust, which leads to fibrosis and to hardening of the lungs. Its symptoms include coughing until patients die from asphyxiation. Currently there are over 650,000 Silicosis patients in China. Gold mining has resulted in the massive destruction of the local environment, with grass being unable to grow within a hundred mile radius of places that were once pristine mountains with clear water. Li Xinmo completed her first video piece, “I Want to Breathe.” A Silicosis patient on the verge of dying appears in the lens, coughing continuously as if he is suffocating. Li also filmed a documentary film with the same title and took numerous photographs as part of her work concerning the rights of Chinese migrant workers. Li has stated that, “they [these migrant workers] have even been stripped of their right to breathe.”

At the same time she was working on “I Want to Breathe,” Li Xinmo also completed a photo-series entitled “A Landscape without Skin.” This work presented scenes from the local landscape, which had been mined excessively. The once green mountains and clear water had been transformed into a desert where no grass could grow within a hundred mile radius. It had become a massive hole that could not be filled or leveled. The ground had been salinized and split open, and gold refinement had severely polluted the local water supply. A deathlike stillness emerges from these photographs.