Gelatin silver print, 23 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
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Rong
Rong, East Village, Beijing, No. 20 (1994). This photo work documents
a celebrated performance by Beijing artist Zhang Huan. Trained as a painter
at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Zhang Huan won recognition as a performance
artist by subjecting himself to violent sensory assaults. In Twelve Square
Meters, whose title refers to the size of the squalid public toilet in
the artist’s impoverished neighborhood, Zhang Huan coated himself
with honey and spent an hour in the foul-smelling toilet, with flies slowly
covering his body. At the end of the period he walked into the water of
a nearby pond. The performance enabled him, he said, to imagine his “essential
existence” reduced to the level of waste. Rong Rong’s photograph
creates an unforgettable symbol for maintaining one’s composure
in a hellish environment. |