QueasyArt

January 2, 2006 8:25 AM

I remember reading about contemporary avant-garde Chinese artist(s) who use grafts from their own skin in their artworks, also incorporating their own blood and, I believe, "unclaimed body" parts. Does anyone know the artists or the name of that movement? Thanks.
posted by glibhamdreck to media & arts (5 comments total)

Not Chinese, but it wasnt this guy was it?
posted by the cuban at 8:28 AM on January 2, 2006

I don't know the answer to your question, but that McMansionesque staple of bible belt America, Thomas Kinkade, uses signatures that are inscribed with his own DNA through small samples of blood and hair (reference and another reference).
posted by stst399 at 8:48 AM on January 2, 2006

It could have been in one of the following books: Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century by Wu, Hung or China Avant-Garde: Counter-Currents in Art and Culture by Noth, Jochen, Wolfger Pohlmann, and Kai Reschke.
posted by glibhamdreck at 9:25 AM on January 2, 2006

Here's a short report on Xiao Yu's fetus/bird thingy ("Ruan", 1999).

Not as recently, artist Zhu Yu apparently "bit into the head of a stillborn baby", featured in a BBC documentary. The best part? He's a Christian! (Protestant, that is.) I've seen this kind of art elsewhere referred to as "xingwei yishu", translated to "behavior art"; this may be Zhu Yu's own term.
posted by ibeji at 9:29 AM on January 2, 2006

Oops I meant "More recently". And I should mention that most say Zhu Yu's piece was "concpetual", that is, faked. Here's another piece on Xiao Yu. These may have little to do with your question actually :-) but FYI.
posted by ibeji at 9:40 AM on January 2, 2006