Performance art in China

Performance art in China

Performance art in China has been growing since the 1970s as a response to the very traditional nature of Chinese state-run art schools. It is becoming more and more popular in spite of the fact that it is currently outlawed. In 1999 the importance of contemporary Chinese art was recognized by the inclusion of 19 contemporary Chinese artists in the Venice Biennale. In recent years many of these artists have made performances specifically for photography or film. Interest in Chinese art has never been higher.

Some of the more extreme examples of Chinese performance art have become notorious in the West. In 2000, Zhu Yu, a painter and performance artist from Cheng Du, created a scandal by taking a number of photographs of himself, supposedly eating a foetus as a protest against state abortions as a means of population control. Peng Yu and Sun Yuan have also worked with human body parts as well as with live animals and are equally notorious. Some younger performance artists who have exhibited widely in the west in 2005-6 are Shu Yang, the organiser of the Dadao Live Art Festival in Beijing, Yang Zhichao, famous for having his identity card number branded on his back and Wang Chuyu who went on hunger strike as part of an exhibition called Fuck Off that took place in Shanghai in 2000 in opposition to the Shanghai Biennale.

They acknowledge a debt to older performance artist and curator Ai Weiwei. Other well-known artists are Ma Liuming and Zhu Ming and He Yunchang .

The 1996 film Frozen (Chinese title: Jidu Hanleng; 极度寒冷) by Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai, made under the pseudonym Wu Ming, has as its protagonists a group of Chinese performance artists, who are shown engaging in several street performances in the film.

Chinese performance artists


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • China Film Performance Art Academy — Chinese Film Performance Art Academy Founded 1985 Members 100,000 Country  China Chinese Film Performance Art Academy (simplified Chinese …   Wikipedia

  • Performance (Kunst) — Performance wird eine situationsbezogene, handlungsbetonte und vergängliche (ephemere) künstlerische Darbietung eines Performers oder einer Performancegruppe genannt. Die Kunstform hinterfragt die Trennbarkeit von Künstler und Werk sowie die… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • China Avant-Garde — Art exhibition The ‘China Avant Garde Exhibition’ took place in the China Art Gallery in Beijing on 5–19 February 1989, two months before the beginning of the Tiananmen Square Student Democratic Movement, and four months before the governmental… …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • China International Copyright Expo — is an annual event that brings companies and organizations, both governmental and independent, to China to discuss various aspects of copyright and intellectual property rights (IPR). The Expo was first held in 2008 and was attended by experts… …   Wikipedia

  • china — /chuy neuh/, n. 1. a translucent ceramic material, biscuit fired at a high temperature, its glaze fired at a low temperature. 2. any porcelain ware. 3. plates, cups, saucers, etc., collectively. 4. figurines made of porcelain or ceramic material …   Universalium

  • China — /chuy neuh/, n. 1. People s Republic of, a country in E Asia. 1,221,591,778; 3,691,502 sq. mi. (9,560,990 sq. km). Cap.: Beijing. 2. Republic of. Also called Nationalist China. a republic consisting mainly of the island of Taiwan off the SE coast …   Universalium

  • Art, Antiques, and Collections — ▪ 2003 Introduction       In 2002 major exhibitions such as Documenta 11 reflected the diverse nature of contemporary art: artists from a variety of cultures received widespread recognition for work ranging from installation to video to painting …   Universalium

  • Art and Art Exhibitions — ▪ 2009 Introduction Art       The art market enjoyed an astonishing run of record breaking sales through the first nine months of a volatile 2008. In May Lucian Freud s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), a candid portrayal of a corpulent female …   Universalium

  • art exhibitions — experimental, 1980s The 1980s saw a surge in exhibitions showing innovative experimental art which fell outside the accepted political and ideological conventions. This art drew on an ongoing link with a pre 1949 modernism that had subsequently… …   Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture

  • Art — This article is about the general concept of Art. For the categories of different artistic disciplines, see The arts. For the arts that are visual in nature, see Visual arts. For people named Art, see Arthur (disambiguation). For other uses, see… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”