ARTIST :
Family
Tree
Date: 2001
Medium: Nine chromogenic
prints, calligraphy ink
Dimensions: 49 1/2 × 39 in
125.7 × 99.1 cm
Edition
of 8 + 2AP
Reference:
http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/527/zhang-huan
Biography:
One
of China's best-known performance and Conceptual artists, Zhang Huan's more
recent work has consisted of sculptures and paintings that reference the
history of his native China, from significant political, intellectual, and
religious figures to anonymous portraits and landscape scenes. For his two- and
three-dimensional works, Zhang frequently uses both common objects and unusual
organic materials, including feathers, cowhides, and for his 2005 sculpture
Donkey, a taxidermied donkey. Particularly evocative is Zhang’s use of incense
ash, a material that epitomizes both detritus and religious ritual, with which
he paints and sculpts works that are as olfactory as they are visual.
(https://www.artsy.net/artwork/zhang-huan-family-tree)
Statement :
"One of the foremost artists in
China's new wave, Zhang Huan creates personal and politicised work that
encompasses performance art, photography, painting, installation and sculpture.
Zhang Huan is a monograph assessing the impact of his explorations of
identity, transgression and spirituality. It takes in his early, often extreme,
performance art in China and New York - My New York for the 2002 Whitney
Biennial, saw him donning a suit sewn from raw beef, imitating the bodybuilders
he had seen who tried to adopt an appearance of strength to hide their real
weakness and unease - and takes us up to his laboriously created, deeply
affected ash paintings and sculptures, created with incense ash collected from
Shanghai temples."—Metro
My Connection:
During the 1990s, Zhang
Huan’s provocative conceptual performances, which tested his physical and
spiritual endurance, established him as one of China’s most celebrated artists.
Using his body as his medium, Zhang challenges notions of national and personal
identity. When Zhang immigrated to New York in 1998, his understanding of his
own identity was profoundly impacted. He saw himself no longer as simply an
artist, but a Chinese artist whose heritage offered up an endless wealth of
inspiration.Family Tree is an exploration of culture and selfhood. Zhang
hired three calligraphers to inscribe Chinese proverbs, family relations and
histories, literary texts, and words deriving from the ancient practice of
physiognomy onto his face over the course of several hours. Gradually obscuring
Zhang’s discernible features, the calligraphy shifts from legibility into an
obliterating mask. Using the camera to record the evolution of this ephemeral
performance, Zhang delves into the correlation, and even arbitrariness, between
his natural and constructed self. Ironically, the two practices in this work
that are most deeply embedded in Chinese culture, calligraphy and
physiognomy—or “face reading”—nullify each other. When they are applied as a
visual lexicon to Zhang’s face, he is stripped of all his identifiable markers.
The nine photographs of Family Tree transform viewers into participants,
allowing them not only to engage with Zhang’s performance, but to reflect upon
their own intrinsic and constructed identities.
—Courtesy of PhillipsDuring the 1990s, Zhang Huan’s provocative
conceptual performances, which tested his physical and spiritual endurance,
established him as one of China’s most celebrated artists. Using his body as
his medium, Zhang challenges notions of national and personal identity. When
Zhang immigrated to New York in 1998, his understanding of his own identity was
profoundly impacted. He saw himself no longer as simply an artist, but a
Chinese artist whose heritage offered up an endless wealth of inspiration.
Family Tree is an exploration of culture and selfhood. Zhang hired
three calligraphers to inscribe Chinese proverbs, family relations and
histories, literary texts, and words deriving from the ancient practice of
physiognomy onto his face over the course of several hours. Gradually obscuring
Zhang’s discernible features, the calligraphy shifts from legibility into an
obliterating mask. Using the camera to record the evolution of this ephemeral
performance, Zhang delves into the correlation, and even arbitrariness, between
his natural and constructed self. Ironically, the two practices in this work
that are most deeply embedded in Chinese culture, calligraphy and
physiognomy—or “face reading”—nullify each other. When they are applied as a
visual lexicon to Zhang’s face, he is stripped of all his identifiable markers.
The nine photographs of Family Tree transform viewers into participants,
allowing them not only to engage with Zhang’s performance, but to reflect upon
their own intrinsic and constructed identities.
—Courtesy of Phillips
Zhang Huan is a Chinese
artist who works out of Shanghai as well as New York City. He is a contemporary
artist who began painting before moving into performance art. Much of his art
address regional matters; political, religious, and other social justice issues.
For “Family tree” using his own face as the canvas, Huan had calligraphers write
down his lineage along with traditional stories and poems in segments
throughout the day in chronological order. The process was photographed and by
the end of the day his face was barely recognizable. The idea of history,
tradition, and family merging with the present individual give a sense of push
and pull as more layers are added. The struggle to uphold and preserve the old
ways while finding a place as an independent entity.
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