Illustration:
ill. 5.58 (set: 5.58)
Date:
1953
Genre:
comic strip
Material:
scan, paper, black-and-white, original source: comic strip, paper
Source:
Guangzhou funü (广州妇女) 1953:1:12; Database: HeidICON (Heidelberg Visual Database) https://heidicon.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/:59149.
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, Mao portrait, private, Mao Cult, everyday life

Moving into the New Dorm (Banjin xin sushe 搬进新宿舍)

Mao’s presence was not just public but private, too, as reflected in popular propaganda materials since the 1950s, many of which show the Mao portrait in the living room and in familiar situations (ill. 5.58). This presence is continually negotiated in contemporary artworks suggesting that even after his death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mao continues to “haunt” private homes as visible in a 1995 mixed media installation by Zhang Hongtu (ill. 5.61a ill. 5.61b).