Yang Fudong

The Coloured Sky: New Women II, 5 , 2014

The photograph The Colored Sky: New Women II, No. 5, 2014, is part of a photo series and, like many of Fudong’s series, was created in parallel to the video installation by the same title. The large-format color photograph is a posed double portrait. In the background, dramatic clouds move across the sky, while in the foreground, two young women in 1940s bathing suits – one red and one pink – pose, sitting on two large rocks. They look at the camera provocatively with slightly-angled chins, while the consciously coquettish body poses do not suit the direct expression of their symmetrical faces. A glittering ray of light breaks through the clouds, emphasizing especially the body of the woman in pink and evoking the image memory of iconic depictions of women, such as Tizian’s Danaë (1544–46). The staging and construction of images of femininity in art, however also in popular culture, are the topic of this photograph, wherein Fudong also plays with the connotations of colors such as red and pink connected with clichés of feminity.

See: The Colored Sky: New Women II, No. 5, 2014