Art, Anthropology and Non-Han Bodies: Pang Xunqin’s Paintings of Miao People in Guizhou Province in the 1940s

• DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2022.2129253
• Publication Date: 2022-12-21T21:33:12Z
• Authors: Jing Zhu
• Keywords: Mongoloid; Representation; Frontier; Han Chinese; Orientalism

This paper considers the ways in which painter Pang Xunqin “translated” bodies of non-Han people, by examining his visual representation Miao people Guizhou during 1940s. His work needs to be understood within context history anthropology Republican China. Since he worked closely with Chinese anthropologists was largely informed an anthropological understanding human diversity and ethnographic collecting museum practice, a matter hardly explored among current studies on Xunqin. Pang’s influenced equal measure customary illustration Western photography. highlights many sources that can found works reveals how depicted peripheral frontier. The biopolitics body, employed as system ethnic classification anthropologists, affected visualization bodies. In order build politicized unifying Zhonghua minzu, demonstrated bodily similarities between Han minorities southwest China under categories “Mongoloid” or “Yellow” racial types. thus emphasizing their majority adopting physical features “Mongoloid/Yellow.” provides fine example art become politicized.