The series painting of ¡°the Facial Makeup of Chinese Opera¡± is created between other series of paintings in these recent years. The idea came from my thoughts on the question of cultural identity. To my thinking, the most charming quality of facial makeup in Chinese opera is that it reveals the chanciness between representational sign and essential identity. Male character can be represented by a female performer; elder can be shown by youngster. The essential identity of actor is not the assured fact. The most important is the sign of the representation. As a trick of metaphor, it is the facial makeup which creates the role, not the actor himself. The facial makeup replacing actors¡¯ facial expression is one signifier replacing another signifier. The facial makeup is not a representational depiction of a natural subject but to reveal its creative nature through its splitting from it¡¯s signified as subject. People always criticizes that today¡¯s Chinese art is more and more becoming symbolized. This kind of view implicates a sort of essentialist call of cultural identity. The demonstration of the facial makeup of Chinese opera is jeering overturn of the essentialism.
