Abstract: This paper examines Chinese feminist artist Li Xinmo’s performance artworks The Death of Xinkai River and A Ritual of Farewell as critical intervention in ecofeminist discourse within the East Asian context. Through a semiotic analysis of polluted water as artistic medium—manifested in cyanobacterial blooms, toxic odors, and corporeal immersion—the study reveals how the work deconstructs romanticized "feminine-water" metaphors to expose the structural parallels between ecological degradation and gendered violence. Framed by Western ecofeminist theories (e.g. Vandana Shiva’s "subsistence perspective", Karen Warren’s "logic of domination") and East Asian "feminine waters" philosophies (e.g. the I Ching’s "Kan as water" cosmology, Ming-Qing "pond drowning" gender discipline), the analysis demonstrates how the artist’s embodied engagement with contaminated waterways subverts the passive "Ophelia" trope while unmasking developmentalism’s dual exploitation of women and nature. The paper argues that the work’s anti-pastoral aesthetics reconfigure the Xinkai River as both "ecological corpse" and "patriarchal accomplice", thereby catalyzing cross-disciplinary dialogues on environmental and gender justice.
Keywords: ecofeminism; feminine waters; performance art; Xinkai River; pollution semiotics; gendered violence
