Featured Acquisition: Hung Liu

Painter/printmaker Hung Liu explains: "My prints are metaphors for memory and history." The "Maiden" is one in a three-part series of works using anonymous historical photographs as the basis for imagined stories of women. The others include "The Bride"and "The Martyr."

Born in Changchun, China, Hung Liu grew up during the social disruption of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In 1968, she was sent to the countryside for proletarian "re-education". For the next four years, she worked in rice and wheat fields as an agricultural laborer, also photographing and drawing portraits of local farmers and their families. Liu went on to study and teach at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and later received permission to attend the University of California, San Diego, where she earned an M.F.A. in 1986. She is currently a professor of art at Mills College in Oakland, California.