Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Exhibition of Chinoiserie at The Met

A Quiet Read in a Chinoiserie Interior | Credit: Creative Commons

Visitors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met) had a shocking revelation during the exhibition Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie, running from March 25 to August 17, 2025.

The show pulled up the curtains on the delicate art of chinoiserie, pronounced (sheen-wah-zuh-ree), to reveal something deep and unsettling about it — unfolding a history of fantasy and cultural reception. The Met’s exhibition of chinoiserie put forward some uneasy questions while exploring this 17^th to 18^th century European decorative style, to explore what lies beneath the veneer of beauty and elegance.

It was revisiting the exotic — some remarkable feminist art on chinoiserie by some Asian and Asian American women.

• If you’re intrigued to know how beauty can become monstrous, join us in this visually unsettling tour.  

What is Chinoiserie (sheen-wah-zuh-ree)?

Chinoiserie is Asian and Chinese influence on European art and décor.

The artistic style of chinoiserie flourished during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, when goods were imported from East Asia and China. The designs mainly had exotic motifs of pagodas, phoenixes, cherry blossoms, bamboo, women in robes, and Asian landscapes painted or crafted onto ceramics, textiles, and furniture.

Though the style was imitated from Eastern culture and celebrated Asian aesthetics, it was far from that. The style was often distorted and merged with European fantasies. The result was a highly ornate Western imagination influenced by the East.

For the last few centuries, the style of chinoiserie has been celebrated as something fantastic and whimsical, with richly ornamented gilded lacquer screens, porcelain dolls, or teacups, projecting the vibes of elite European homes.

A German Table Decoration Inspired by Eastern Culture | Credit: Creative Commons

The Met’s recent exhibition challenged that beauty, with some phenomenal works.

What Lies Underneath the Veneer of Asian Beauty?

Monstrous Beauty sets a dialogue with history. In the opening segment, the Korean artist Yeesookyung showcased her towering porcelain sculptures.

She used the Japanese Kintsugi tradition, the art of wabi sabi, to repair and fuse shattered ceramic fragments together with 24-karat gold. The outcome was more than beautiful! She highlighted the contours of imperfections rather than concealing them, which was the sharp contrast to the chinoiserie tradition.

Translated Vase by Korean artist Yeesookyung | Credit: Creative Commons

There were unsettling works, like Medici vessels decorated with exaggerated female anatomy, decorative pieces that showcased female bodies to challenge the false notion of femininity, sweetmeat dishes featuring a screaming siren with drooping breasts, and so on.

• The elegance and delicacy of the décor became objects of disgust and confession when seen from a feminist lens.

Feminist Revisions of Chinoiserie

The exhibition shows how contemporary feminist art reinvents or rediscovers chinoiserie from a subjective point of view.

In the 17^th or 18^th century, Europe was allured by the exoticism of the blue-and-white porcelain vases, teacups, or Asian décor. They were symbolized as something exotic, and cultural stereotypes were framed about Asian women. The exhibition rekindled the quest for beauty not as a passive model but as an ideology.

Chinoiserie Blue Pottery | P Regout | Cedit: Creative Commons

Here porcelain is more than a material for decoration – it is a blend of delicacy and raw energy.

Patty Chang’s video Melons or Jen Liu’s 2023 video The Land at the Bottom of the Sea, reveal some exquisite feminine form, often associated with chinoiserie.

The melon here takes the form of a female breast, the sea mermaids turn into bloodthirsty and haunting creatures, breaking the stereotypes. It shows how fantasy can blur into violence.

Chinoiserie, Violence, and the Notion of Exotic

It was 2021, in Atlanta, a man opened fire in a spa parlor. Six Asian women were shot dead. Monstrous Beauty has a deep connection with that event, as noted by the curator of the show. The feminist exhibition questions gender roles time and again; the viewers are compelled to see beneath the labels of delicate and supple porcelain. Here, the exhibitors try to outgrow that legacy, placing it in a contemporary framework.

The 2021 tragedy somehow echoed century-old European myths or the cultural fetishization of Asian women — how the Western world reduced them to exotic objects of desire.

Monstrous Beauty reignites that objectification and notes that it still circulates today. Otherwise, how could something as harmless and beautiful as Chinoiserie be linked to such racism and violence?

The answers kept blowing in the wind as the awestruck visitors walked through the contemporary creations, disturbing in their appeal, intricate and layered, revealing the art of chinoiserie as something more than just materials — it was about the stories of gender, sexuality, people, and the cultural fantasies projected onto them.

Chinese Couple in an Arbor, Peter Reinicke, Hard-paste Porcelain | Wadsworth Atheneum | Hartford | Credit: Creative Commons

Monstrous Beauty of Porcelain: An Artsy Confession

The title Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie took visitors to the final exhibit with Lee Bul’s Monster: Black (2011), a sculpture that makes you pause. It shows the tentacles of a monster decorated with sequins. It traces back to the past, where the art of chinoiserie was often ridiculed for being overly ornate, or ‘monstrous’ in style. The comparison of the contemporary monster and the historical critique revealed that there was always something unsettling behind the gold-plated edges and delicate surfaces. It was never as innocent as it was considered to be!

Sculpture by Lee Bull | Credit: Creative Commons

How the Legacy of Porcelain Dolls Makes Us Rethink

The elegant-looking pieces of chinoiserie, the gold-rimmed tea cups, the porcelain dolls in antique shops — remind us of the past relics and how they were used as interior décor and symbols of affluence. The show Monstrous Beauty made the visitors rethink the chinoiserie décor of the past, and how its impact had lived on.

Seeing them through a feminist lens made the experience altogether different. The exhibition unfolded many stories regarding the myths of beauty, fantasy, and identity — how they are constructed by people and notions. Thus, porcelain becomes more than an object of beauty; it becomes a medium of reflection through which we revisit the conflict of East and West, the ideas of femininity, identity, possession, gender roles, and fantasy.

The exhibition had more than 200 pieces for display — an inspiring and insightful show of the hidden anxieties that existed within the art of chinoiserie itself, but were never revealed. 

Beyond the Art of Exotic: Revisiting Stories and Myths  

Monstrous Beauty: Feminist Revisions of Chinoiserie was unlike any other art exhibition. It was a confession of centuries-old myths and social and cultural constructs that exoticized Asia and its women. That’s how Monstrous Beauty confronts porcelain’s history — not to address its refinement, but the distortion, desire, and powerplay within.

The contemporary feminist artists reworked the decorative style, and a monstrous idea of beauty emerged through the bulbous projection of female body parts and intentional cracks mended with gold and glitter — to show the imperfections behind the flawless art of the 18^th century.

The show made the visitors look closer into the delicate objects often considered as feminine or domestic, to see beyond the art of the exotic, where beneath the porcelain veneers, many stories were left untold.