Growing up in southwest China's Yunnan Province, He is one of the most famous and prolific performance artists in China. During the past decade, he would complete at least one piece of work almost every year. He often draws inspiration from Chinese philosophy and myth yet also cuts into problems of modern society.
In a landmark project in 2003, He cast his left hand in a cement column for 24 hours, realizing a scene from The Chuang-tzu about keeping a promise. In "One Rib" (2008), he had his eighth rib - one of the longest and most vital - surgically removed and made into a necklace, and then posed for photographs with the five most important women in his life wearing it; while in "Eyesight Test" (2003), he stared at close distance at 10,000 watts of light for an hour.
With a number of works testing the extreme of philosophical and physical endurance, He gradually developed a unique personal style that features fruitless, cruel, yet persistent attempts, trying to reveal "the confrontation between doing something and doing nothing; between eternity and a moment, between forbearing and exploding, between the dynamic and the static", as mentioned in the introduction of the exhibition.
"Compared to other artists that really challenge the limit, I'm not going that extreme. But sometimes the strong, intensified expression is effective to grab attention and interact with them," He said.
In distinction to the sense of "performance" as acting, He Yunchang refers to his practice as "xianchang yishu", or "live art," after the U.K. art movement of the same name.
"Painters use brushes and musicians use instruments to express their feelings and thoughts. For performance artists like us, we just use ourselves as part of the material in conveying messages,"he said in an interview.
"Every thing in nature, like flying birds, swimming fish, and growing flowers, all expressing themselves with their bodies," he added, "And that is also the way I live."
If you go:
A Chang
July 8 – August 1, 2016
Venue: 2/F, 3/F and 4/F exhibition hall of Building No. 1, Today Art Museum
Address: Today Art Museum, Building 4, Pingod Community, No. 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing.
