February 17, 1948 Born in Changchun, Manchuria.

1949 Founding of the People’s Republic of China.

1957 Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” is initiated in order to bring China up to speed with the West in industrial and agricultural production.

1966 Liu is about to finish high school when schools close due to the initiation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She does not receive her diploma.

1968 Liu is sent to the country for her ideological re-education where she spends four years working in the rice and wheat fields.

1972 After returning home to Beijing, Liu enrolls in the Revolutionary Entertainment Department at Beijing Teachers’ College where she studies art and art education.

1975 Liu receives her degree equivalent of the B.F.A., Education and begins teaching art at an experimental school for elementary and high school students known as the Jingshan School in Beijing.

1978 China’s “Open Door Policy” to the West begins.

1979 Liu begins work as a graduate student of mural painting at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts.

1981 While completing her degree equivalent of the M.F.A. at the Central Academy, Liu is notified of her acceptance to the graduate school in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. The university agrees to hold her application open until she is granted a passport by the Chinese government.

1982 Liu teaches at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and studies traditional calligraphy and stamp-making from the Peking Opera playwright Niu Jun.

1984 The Chinese government finally provides Liu with a passport, allowing her to leave for California to begin her graduate work at UCSD. She begins studying under Allan Kaprow and works with fellow graduate student Lorna Simpson.

1986 Liu receives her M.F.A. in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego.

1987 The University of Texas, at Arlington employs Liu as Adjunct Professor of Chinese Art History.

1989 A friend gives Liu an old photograph of a woman exposing her bare feet that had been deformed by the traditional practice of foot-binding. Liu appropriates the image for her painting Goddess of Love, Goddess of Liberty, and uses it repeatedly for other works, including her lithograph entitled Bonsai.

1989 The National Endowment for the Arts grants Liu her first Painting Fellowship.

1989-90 Liu holds the position of Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas.

1990 Mills College in Oakland, California offers Liu a teaching position in the Art Department. She moves to California and begins teaching as Assistant Professor of Art.

1991 Liu receives her second National Endowment for the Arts Painting Fellowship and begins showing at the Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco as well as the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York City. She also becomes a U.S. citizen.

1991 During her first visit back in China, Liu discovers an archive of turn-of-the-century photographs of Chinese prostitutes that she starts using in her paintings.

1992 Participates in Washington University School of Art Collaborative Print Workshop in St. Louis, MO.

1993 Liu returns to China to find more archival photographs to incorporate into her paintings and prints.

1994 Liu exhibits her work in Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art at the Asia Society in New York City.

1995 Mills College grants Liu tenure. She continues teaching as an Associate Professor of Art.

1996 Liu exhibits her work in American Kaleidoscope: Art At The Close of This Century, at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington D.C.


Jodi Kovach
MA 2003