Kate Lingley

Medieval Chinese Buddhist Monuments: Kinship in Art

A common assumption is that the otherworldliness of Buddhism counters the this-worldliness of Chinese family life. Yet, Buddhist art in the heyday of this great religion (4th-6th centuries in China), shows a visual confirmation of the mutual accommodation of the two world views. Professor Lingley’s talk points to the common practice of dedicating a Buddhist monument for the karmic benefit of a deceased family member. The placement of figures in space, the use of generational naming patterns in inscriptions, the inclusion of deceased family members alongside the living, the separation of male and female figures, the use of symmetry to connect as well as separate: these and other characteristics of donor portraits mean that they frequently represent not only the patrons as individuals, but also the network of kin relationships within which the patronage was organized.

Excelling the Work of Heaven 巧奪天工: Chinese Personal Adornment at the University of Hawai‘i Art Gallery

Please come to an “insider’s” introduction to a current exhibition on the Manoa campus. Kate Lingley is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art History at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She is co-curator of the exhibition “Excelling the Work of Heaven: Personal Adornment from China,” on view in the University of Hawai‘i Art Gallery from October 28 through December 14. The exhibition showcases 703 pieces of jewelry and other personal adornment from late imperial China, together with dragon robes and ancestor portraits of the same period.

Signs of Difference: Gender and Ethnic Costume at the Founding of the Tang

In the art of the Tang dynasty, foreigners are often depicted with distinctive facial features, including large noses, full beards, and deep-set eyes. Yet a hundred years earlier, the chief sign of a foreigner in Chinese art was foreign dress, not foreign physiognomy. How did this change in visual language take place? Kate Lingley explores and explains this move from sartorial to physiognomic differentiation of ethnicity. This change in visual culture has important social and political implications for conquest and division in Chinese history.