©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, For/With Charlotte, 2022

In my first semester as a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I had the honor of taking Adam J Greteman’s Trans, Queer and Feminist Studies course. My eyes were opened to so much that I did not know when it came to gender and how we as a society perform gender. I now think of gender through the lens of Judith Butler’s philosophy written in Critically Queer (1993) in which they state: “The conclusion is drawn that gender performativity is a matter of constituting who one is on the basis of what one performs. And further, that gender itself might be proliferated beyond the binary frame of “man” and “woman” depending on what one performs…”.

I have followed the works of several photo-based artists who uniquely explore gender in their work, and today’s featured artist, Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, is one of them. In this analysis, not only do I offer a perspective into the way Liang navigates gender in her practice, but I am also thrilled to share further insight from the artist herself.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, Self Portrait With Weights, 2022

Margaret Liang (b.1998, China) is an artist and curator based in London, UK. Her practice is centered around auto-theoretical representations, identity politics, and the making/unmaking of narratives. Her works have been exhibited across the UK, Europe, and Asia including New Contemporaries 2023 at Camden Art Centre, The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Palm Photo Prize at Melkweg Expo, NL and Art Busan, KR. Her curatorial works include One Swam Up Another Stream at Art In The Docks Gallery (London), Chorus of Contact in collaboration with Triangle Network (London), and curatorial writings in collaboration with Bonian Space (Beijing) . 

Instagram @ __________marg___

Beyond her photographic practice, Liang’s continuous journey into bodybuilding serves as an act of healing and self-discovery, reinforcing her commitment to reshaping narratives around the body and strength. Before diving deeper into her work, it’s important to take note of the context of how she came to bodybuilding and how her current series, Mountain of A? came to be.

ANP: You shared that an injury is what brought you to bodybuilding. I’m curious as to what drew you to this sport and what that journey was like. 

WML: After the injury, I was physically weak due to numerous fractures and had to go through months of physiotherapy where I was told to lift some weights. I started going to the gym and started to love the process. It was comforting in its formula-like simplicity and was a way for me to reconnect and reclaim control of my body. Apart from bodybuilding, I also began to practice mixed martial arts and a variety of other sports. Since I have struggled with body dysmorphia most of my adulthood, it was refreshing to experience the body through its functionality instead of visual appearance. Despite the relentless health and fitness culture getting in the way from time to time, the process has been meditative for me and has allowed me to discover a body and self-image alternative to the hyper-femininity expected in East Asian women.

Liang’s photographic practice challenges conventional representations of gender, power, and identity, particularly within the context of how Asian women are portrayed in Western societies. In her recent, ongoing body of work, Mountain of A?, she defies heteronormative narratives, offering an expansive view of self-expression that breaks free from restrictive social norms. Margaret challenges the reductive and hyper-sexualized depictions of women prevalent in historical art and contemporary media. She dismantles normative gestures traditionally linked to “female” and “male,” presenting a nuanced balance of power that transcends body size and perceived strength. Through a collaborative process with several of her friends, Liang redefines ownership and control in the photographic experience, often blurring the line between who holds the title of photographer and subject. This approach is exemplified throughout the series in images such as “For/With William” (2002) where we see Margaret cradling William within the space while also allowing William to control the shutter. Their direct gaze into the camera exudes confidence and confronts the viewer by letting us know that within their positions, they are both equally powerful within the frame.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, For/With William, 2022

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, For/With Helen, 2022

ANP: What is the process like for you and your accompanying friends? Is there any planning involved or is it intuitive? 

WML: I met the friends I photograph through all kinds of encounters: university, work, gym, dating apps, and an online community of women bodybuilders. Most of them are familiar with my ideas and there’s often no need for much explaining about what I try to achieve with the photographs. One thing I try to ask them is “based on my self expression and my expression of gender, how would you interact with me?” The process is often intuitive – we would simply meet up and experiment with different ideas and poses until reaching a decisive moment. Some of the friends would feel a bit uneasy or intimidated by the camera, so we would always leave enough time, around two hours for experimentation, to find something they’re completely comfortable with. One memorable example of this intuition would be the photo with Ramos, when we decided to do an arm wrestling pose, both of us immediately started to do push-ups to make our arms appear bigger in the photo.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, For/With Ramos, 2022

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, ”NO!”, 2023

There are a plethora of photo-based artists who explore gender and gender performativity within their practices. Liang’s artistic approach is deeply influenced by Pixy Liao’s Experimental Relationship and Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women, works that also explore the dynamics of power and representation. For context, Experimental Relationship (2007-now) utilizes intimate and often playful images created by Liao who explores her relationship with her partner reversing traditional power roles associated with masculinity and femininity. Jeff Wall explores gender in Picture for Women (1979) by critiquing the dynamics of power and objectification in art, positioning the woman not simply as a passive subject but as an active participant in the image’s creation. Influences from artists like Tommy Kha and writer Andrea Long Chu further inform her exploration of identity and intimacy. While Kha’s work often grapples with the intersection of personal and cultural identity, using humor, vulnerability, and staged photography to interrogate the dynamics of intimacy and alienation, Chu’s writings, particularly her reflections on desire, gender, and the ways societal constructs influence personal experience, provide a theoretical lens for understanding intimacy as a fluid and multifaceted concept. With these influences in mind, Liang adds to the canon of the works of these inspirations by crafting a visual language that confronts historical portrayals of women as hyper-sexualized or passive whether in photography or traditional paintings. Her photographs highlight a shared power balance, emphasizing mutual respect and intentionality.

Initially working in rented or borrowed spaces, Liang began creating intricate paper installations for her shoots. This shift reflects her conceptual exploration of gender as a constructed and performative identity. The fragility of the paper mirrors the instability of gender norms, while the freedom found in these fabricated environments underscores the possibility of redefining identity outside societal constraints. In Liang’s self-portrait, “Reclining Self Portrait” (2023), Margaret rests within and on the fragile paper installation. Even while in a rested position, not only is she confronting the viewer and squeezing the workout tool with a compromised wrist, but she is also releasing the shutter between her feet. This portrait further emphasizes how fragility and strength can coexist. 

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, Reclining Self Portrait, 2023

ANP: Your paper installations are fascinating both visually and representationally. Is this a form of creation in your photographic practice that you foresee revisiting in the future?

WML: Definitely. The paper installations have transformed my practice and thought process in many ways. Taking inspiration from the compositional artifice in Jeff Wall’s works, many of my photographs are reconstructed from representations of masculinity in popular culture, or traditional art forms with a high presence in the Western art Canon (such as Manet’s Olympia and Michaelangelo’s Pieta). One part of my work which I wasn’t entirely sure about was its environmental settings: the domestic spaces where the photos took place often didn’t add a lot of meaning. The paper installations opened up new possibilities for my practice as it allowed me to create  durational “photographic happenings” instead of one singular moment frozen in time and space. I’m also keen on implementing the paper installations in my curatorial practice in future.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, Untitled, 2024

Throughout her work, Liang thoughtfully considers gestures of strength, recognizing that power as well as gender exists on a spectrum. Femininity and masculinity are not presented as binary opposites but as fluid performances that intersect and challenge one another. Her compositions often feature gendered objects, attire, and physical body stature—such as stockings, heels, muscles, and weights—but these subjects are recontextualized to critique their conventional associations. Alongside the underlying critique in her work, softness remains central through the deliberate use of pastel tones, creating a sense of vulnerability and tenderness. This duality reflects Liang’s nuanced perspective on strength, where softness and power coexist.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, Self Portrait as a Bodybuilder, 2023

ANP: As you continue to develop this body of work, do you find that it has brought you more questions or that you’ve encountered any resolutions? 

WML: As I continue my research on the matter of the body, gender and the auto-theoretical while working on the project, I have definitely encountered many new questions in the scope of feminist studies, identity politics and cultural fluidity. One specific question I struggle with is the correlation between physical strength/culture (which is highly present in my work) and personal agency, as physical strength alone as a representation of empowerment can be very abstracted and limiting. I’ve also been questioning myself if physical empowerment may also be a form of assimilation (which strips agency away from an individual in many ways ) that happens out of the fear of being “feminized”. I suspect this to be “assimilation” as some of my friends and I share the same experience where the more “masculine” we appear, the less gender-based discrimination and violence we experience. As much as I would like to find answers or solutions to the matter, the experience of gender are highly individualized and often nuanced, so I’d like to think of my practice as a curious pondering at the intersection of visual representation, culture and gender, potentially fostering a space for dialogues and mutual understanding. 

Liang’s work is an evolving investigation of photography and its role in celebrating or objectifying marginalized people and their bodies. Above all else, she is unafraid to question the medium’s historical role in reinforcing stereotypes. By encouraging the viewer to consider how deeply societal norms influence the shaping of our bodies, she offers a reimagined representation that is gentle and intentional, yet simultaneously powerful and adaptable.

©Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, For/With Fei, 2022

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Liang has expanded her research of gender into the curatorial, in a recent exhibition she curated named “The Eve Principle” at Norito Venue in London, featuring artists Qinyang Li, Celia Mora, Ladina Clément, Carmen Huizar and Liang herself named The Eve Principle: Masculinity by Women. As noted in the exhibition didactic:

Andrea Long Chu’s “Females”, along with the research of many authors working(or worked) in the matter of gender such as Virginie Despendes and Kathy Acker, debunked the notion of masculinity where one actively participates in the process of developing and acting out masculine traits and is always in control. Instead, they argue that masculinisation, like feminisation, is a socially mandated process imposed on an individual and often strips one of their power and agency.

“The Eve Principle” is an exhibition that delves into the complex and multifaceted representations of masculinity through the eyes of five contemporary women artists. In this show, the traditional boundaries of gender and identity are not only examined but actively reinterpreted, as the artists explore masculinity from a perspective that challenges, redefines, and reimagines it. Their works open new spaces for dialogue about strength, fragility, beauty, and power, while exploring how these qualities are embodied, performed, and transformed when viewed through a female lens.

The show asks viewers to reconsider how gendered identities are constructed, performed, and understood. Through the lens of these powerful, both direct and nuanced bodies of work, one is invited to question the ways in which masculinity and femininity intersect, and how both can be embraced, subverted, and recreated.

To learn more about Margaret, you can follow her on Instagram @ __________marg___or visit her website at https://margaretliang.photography/about.

Alayna N. Pernell (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator from Heflin, Alabama. Pernell’s artistic practice considers the gravity of the mental well-being of Black women concerning the physical and metaphorical spaces they inhabit. She serves as a Content Editor for Lenscratch, an online photographic arts publication. Additionally, she is the founder of Surely You Know?, an archival photographic initiative dedicated to returning displaced photographs to black families. 

In May 2019, she graduated from The University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography and a minor in African American Studies. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2021.

Currently, she is based in Milwaukee, WI where she serves as the Associate Lecturer of Photography & Imaging at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Instagram: @alaynapernell