Shasha Liu

PhD Candidate

Campus

Areas of Interest

  • Modern Chinese visual culture history
  • Chinese animation studies
  • East Asian film studies

Working Dissertation

Title

Mediating Dunhuang with Images in 1940s-1980s

Supervisors

Professor Yue Meng
Professor Yi Gu
Professor Yurou Zhong

Description

How media shapes visual communication lies in the core of my research project, which investigates the role of modern media in transforming Mogao Grottos, an ancient Buddhist archeological site along the Silk Road at Dunhuang, China, into a set of visual realities. The premodern history of the site and this peculiar region has been reconstructed, which facilitates the object-oriented Dunhuang Studies. Although current scholarship has pointed out the regional and transnational cultural politics behind ideological manipulations of the site as well as the Silk Road in modern times, how Dunhuang was visualized, understood, and imagined in the twentieth century through media—photos, mural copies, films and their museum displays—has yet to be studied. How do various media affect the representation of Dunhuang? How are the perceptions of the site continuously formed by visual mediations? This project argues that the visual mediations of Dunhuang produce knowledge, shape politics, and rewrite relations among the self, the tradition, and the world.

Biography

Shasha Liu is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese visual culture history. She holds a Master's degree in Art History from the University of Toronto (2011). She is currently working on her PhD dissertation, which investigates the issue of mediating Dunhuang in the 20th century through the perspectives of four visual mediums: photography, painting, animation, and film. She has interned at the Royal Ontario Museum (Far Eastern Department) from 2011 to 2017 and has received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship in support of her work at the University of Toronto.

Presentations

  • “From Zaojing / Caisson to Carpet: Reconstructed Dunhuang Mural with Design in The Conceited General.” SAS @ 30: Then | Now | Next (The 30th Annual International Society for Animation Studies Conference), Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), June 18-22, 2018.

Publications

  • Liu, Shasha. Review of On the Move: The Trans/national Animated film in 1940s-1970s China (Ph.D diss.), by Daisy Yan Du, Association of Chinese Animation Studies, posted September 5, 2017.
  • Liu, Shasha. "Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980 交通-加拿大的观念艺术(1965-1980)." Rong Bao Zhai 荣宝斋 2 (2011): 152-161.
  • Shao, Liang and Liu, Shasha (Co-author). "Contemplation in Autumn: An Interview with He Jiaying 秋冥之路—何家英访谈录."
  • Shao, Dazhen ed. Wan Shan Hong Bian: "The Interview of New China Arts in 60 Years 万山红遍-新中国美术60年访谈录 1949-2009." Beijing: People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2009. 466-473.
  • Shao, Liang and Liu, Shasha (Co-author). "The Reality of Huang Hun 黄昏的‘现实感’." Shao, Dazhen ed. Wan Shan Hong Bian: The Interview of New China Arts in 60 Years 万山红遍-新中国美术60年访谈录 1949-2009. Beijing: People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2009. 432-439.

Awards

Education

MA, Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts
MA, University of Toronto