Meanings of the nude: Pan Yuliang in Hua Hun (1994)

Hua Hun (1994) is a biopic about the artist Pan Yuling, directed by Huang Shuqin. The film uses art to explore female agency. This article proposes an analysis of the treatment that both authors gave to the nude and the multiplicity of meanings that they attributed to it. To achieve this, their previous works (in painting and cinema) have been examined for thematic and aesthetic coincidences. Pan Yuliang’s portraits and self-portraits were tools for the construction of the female identity, which under Huang Shuqin’s interpretation, spin a narrative that represents the transgression of the object/subject dynamic, transforming their creator into both and neither, which results in the restitution of her full artistic and personal autonomy.