Kiva Liu: Four Comrades, One Echo

Four Comrades, One Echo investigates the complexity of sisterhood, personal agency and women’s solidarity within a collectivist society through the lives of my four ‘mothers’; my mother and her three sisters who each co-parented me at different stages of my life. Through collective storytelling, we trace their experiences as Chinese women navigating the Mao era and the post-reform transition to capitalism, exploring how they upheld their resilience and agency despite the ideological and patriarchal oppression they faced, bringing earlier moments of feminism under socialism into dialogue with the present.

The storytelling extends beyond filmmaking, evolving into writing, documentary theatre, personal archives, and this artist publication, which brings together artworks by the four mothers created during and after the filmmaking process. It shifts between collective and individual expression, offering a space where the past resonates with the present. Ultimately, this research challenges dominant feminist discourses, advocating for a pluralistic understanding of ‘feminisms’ to emerge – one rooted in cultural, geographical and historical specificity.