Assoc Prof Wei-Cheng Lin, Department of Art History, The University of Chicago

Foreign musicians, opulently dressed court ladies, handsomely made dancing horses—these are only a few examples of tomb figurines from Tang China that can be easily found in museum collections. All these figurines appear joyful as though they were serving a luxurious lifestyle, or enhancing a celebratory atmosphere, and yet, they were, in fact, part of tomb furnishings, once the door was sealed, closed inside the burial chamber forever. Though diverse in type and representation, the Tang figurines share most obviously a sense of performance, and yet, one wonders for whom and to what end they were made to perform in the dark, lonely, and secluded subterraneous chamber. This lecture will reconsider the ‘performance’ of the burial artefacts from Tang China with these questions in mind.

Wei-Cheng Lin is Associate Professor of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago, where he also received his doctoral degree in 2006. Lin specialises in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary research interests are visual and material cultural issues in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a sacred mountain: the Buddhist architecture of China’s Mount Wutai (2014). He has also published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art. Lin’s current book project, titled Performative architecture of China, investigates the ways in which Chinese architecture can be considered as actively engaging its users by structuring, affecting, evoking or shaping their spatial senses and imagination.

Image: 'Mural of females' c710 (detail), Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology


Performing in the afterlife: performance and performativity of Tang tomb art

Art Gallery of NSW