Junwen Tan

Through an underlying, primitive matriarchal lens, the book of Wang-Nu (亡女書 or 妄書) is an artist's book trilogy which projected on hard facts, extreme fragmentation, and systemic marginality. The Chinese title characteristically combining the meaning of  'the deceased, dead, missing women' and 'absurd, preposterous, mad, turmoil'.

The books explore and uncover the eclipsing truth lay under the historical contexts as well as inconvenient social realities and political myths. The first part investigates the lives of many educated women who tragically perished during the decade of the Cultural Revolution, followed by the second part that highlights the cases of female executions in contemporary China. Furthermore, the third part addresses the burning times of 300 years of the witch-hunt in pre-modern Europe. However, the non-linear, fragmented information cluster in the books attempts to reveal the often forbidden stories and painful images of both unspeakable individuals and the blanket silence as a whole.