Anyone who has ever had a mainland Chinese mother or host mother will understand the appeal of Hsueh Wei’s latest series of art, "Transparent or Not: A Visual Art & Cross-Cultural Study of Contemporary Urban China." In a set of photographs, blown up larger than life, she makes visible a fashion trend that is at once alarming and endearing: silk stockings and fancy shoes.

In a lecture delivered at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) where she is a professor, Wei described the thought process behind her decision to document, sometimes voyeuristically, the silk stocking and fancy footwear combination favored by older mainland Chinese women.

"When I first saw the stockings, the fashionista in me was repulsed," she candidly admitted during her talk. "I started taking pictures of these women’s feet. Sometimes I would ask them, other times I would just take the picture."

In speaking to the women about their fashion choice, Wei discovered the Chinese women believed skin-toned stockings, directly translated from Chinese as "glass slipper stockings," were invisible.

Meanwhile, the shoe styles worn by the women in the photographs are predominantly open-toed western heels. Combining the Chinese fashion staple with an exotic accessory has visually abrasive results, suggesting that globalization — applied here to style — can result in bizarre cultural marriages.

Wei is an artist obsessed with conflict and contradiction. Born to Chinese immigrant parents and raised in Taiwan, she was always made aware of her cultural heritage by the people with whom she interacted.

Wei’s parents themselves were complete opposites. Her father, a Han Chinese, grew up in a small fishing village in southern China’s Zhejiang province. Her mother — part Manchu and part Han — grew up in a prominent political family in northern China.

From a young age she explored the disparate parts of her identity. She would lose her school identification photos so she could take a new one each year. She returned again and again to the same small photo shop, attempting without success to create an image of herself she felt to be truthful.

The artist’s attempts at accurate representation dominated her work until very recently. She has now turned her critical lens outward — to the stocking-clad feet of older mainland Chinese women.

Near the end of her lecture at PNCA, Wei gave the audience a glimpse into her latest work: another China-related piece called "Oceanic Advertisement." The long, panoramic image captures a phenomenon that seems distinctly Chinese as it occurs on the main road of Jiajing county in Sichuan province. Each of the storefronts has a sign with an almost identical blue river background. She invited the comparison between this display and the heavy importance the western world places on branding.

"Transparent or Not" is on display at the PNCA Corner Gallery, located at 1241 N.W. Johnson Street in Portland, through April 3. For more information, call (503) 226-4391 or visit <www.pnca.edu>. To learn more about Hsueh Wei and her artwork, visit <www.hsuehwei.com>.