Visible Bodies, Invisible Power
(In ancient Chinese ghost stories, women often appear not as full subjects, but as bodies to be controlled, disciplined, and objectified.
Their images shift—from ghosts, demons, and wives, to commodities, ornaments, or threats.
My project asks: How are women’s bodies represented and regulated in these stories, and how can we make those invisible powers visible again?
I chose two classical Chinese collections: Liaozhai Zhiyi 《聊斋志异》 and Taiping Guangji 《太平广记》.
From both the Chinese originals and the English translations, I selected stories of women.
Using tools like NLTK, VADER, and 微词云, I extracted words of discipline, objectification, and emotion.
This process revealed translation differences: Chinese often shows stronger discipline and negative emotion, while English tends to soften or flatten the meaning.
By coding adjectives, verbs, and nouns, I turned the stories into datasets—numbers that reflect how female bodies were framed.
From text I created data. From data, I generated matter.
I designed two sculptures: The Window with Thorns and The Goose Cage with Thorns.
Each thorn corresponds to a negative or objectifying word.
The more the text disciplines women, the denser the thorns become.
In this way, abstract language is transformed into something tangible—something that pricks, resists, and forces us to feel.
Combining 3D printing with ink painting, I built not just objects, but metaphors for the silent suffering and resilience of women in these stories.
These sculptures are more than artistic experiments.
They are questions in material form:
How do we read women’s bodies across time, language, and translation?
How can digital humanities reimagine feminist resistance—not only through analysis, but also through creation?
My project invites us to see, to touch, and to question the invisible powers hidden within visible bodies.
Reference:
Butler, J., 1999. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Federici, S., 2023. 超越身体边界: 在当代资本主义中反思、重塑和重夺身体. Translated by J. Wang. Beijing: Guangqi Press. (Original work published 2020 as Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism.)
Gaviria, A.R., 2008. When is information visualization art? Determining the critical criteria. Leonardo, 41(5), pp.479–482.
Knight, K.B., 2018. ‘Danger, Jane Roe!’: material data visualization as feminist praxis. In: E. Losh and J. Wernimont, eds. 2018. Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.3–24. doi:10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.4.
Li, F., et al., 1998. Into the porcelain pillow: 101 tales from Records of the Taiping Era. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Li, X., 2024. Taiping Guangji qingsong du《太平广记轻松读》. Beijing: China Literature and History Press.
Nussbaum, M.C., 1995. Objectification. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 24(4), pp.249–291.
Pu, S., 1989. Strange tales from a make-do studio. Translated by D.C. Mair and V.H. Mair. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
Pu, S. [蒲松龄], 2025. Liaozhai zhiyi (Yuedu jingdian baihua ban)《聊斋志异（悦读经典白话版）》. Translated by X. Jia. Beijing: Manbanpai Culture Co., Ltd.
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