Wendy Chuwen Xiao

I am interested in how objects generate and mediate fantasies of desire in early modern China. In particular, I am drawn to visual, textual, and sensorial objects that unsettle the boundaries of normative desire, gender performativity, and sexual morality. For my MA thesis, I explored these interests through an eighteenth-century Qing erotic album, where I argue that the idiosyncratic visual mode of the painted images suggests that the album was made for a female audience. In my free time, I enjoy making illustrations and paintings.