Art, for me, is a feminist act: every image of the female body resists silence.
My work often starts from personal experience, but it is not limited to private stories.
It points to the social and cultural gaze and control over the female body. In my paintings, the body is both a container of personal feelings and a reflection of power. It holds intimacy but cannot escape its social meaning;
it is shaped, yet it also resists.
Through this tension, I try to show how the female image has been built and silenced in history and in the present, and how painting can create new space for voice and agency.
Family
Oil on canvas | 48 x 60 inch
New York, 2024
Never Show Off
Oil on canvas | 65 x 65 inch
San Francisco, 2025
Missing
Oil on canvas | 48 x 60 inch
San Francisco | 2024
Jiao Deng | China
Art, for me, is a feminist act: every image of the female body resists silence. My practice is rooted in oil painting, where I engage with the complexities of womanhood—its strength, its vulnerability, and its contradictions. I see the female body not as a passive object, but as an active site of memory, desire, and resistance.
Much of my work draws inspiration from lived experience, from the intimacy of family life to the broader social and cultural conditions that shape women’s identities. In my paintings, the body becomes both personal and political—marked by tenderness yet charged with power. This duality allows me to reframe familiar images of women, shifting them away from silence and erasure toward visibility and agency.
Formally, I use layered brushwork and a balance of softness and intensity to capture the ambiguity of memory: at once fragile and enduring, blurred yet undeniable. The surfaces of my paintings are intended to evoke both scars and openings, gestures that suggest healing as well as confrontation.
Ultimately, I see my work as a bridge between the individual and the collective. While grounded in my own perspective, my paintings seek to resonate with broader feminist struggles, amplifying the voices and experiences of women across time and space. Each image resists silence and insists on presence, reminding us that art itself can be a space of resistance, solidarity, and transformation.
Contact Me.
Email : jiaodeng@cca.edu
Instagram : jiao_deng_