Yunchang He

The most committed and challenging performance artist of China He Yunchang b 1967 has performed and exhibited worldwide In his intimate and cathartic performances psychological and physical stamina gains existential significance In Dialog with Water 1999 he attempted over 90 minutes to cut a river into two halves with a knife while hanging upsidedown from a crane in Wrestling One and One Hundred 2001 he wrestled consecutively with a hundred people over 66 minutes in Casting 2004 he sealed himself inside a concrete block for 24 hours Elsewhere he undertakes journeys of selfdiscovery and returns psychologically transformed In The Rock Tours Around Great Britain September 24 2006 January 14 2007 he carried a rock from Boulmer on the northeastern coast of England and returned it there after walking 3500 kilometers counterclockwise along the perimeter of Britain In Dream of TravelingFrom Fukuoka Asian Art Museum to Mount Fuji 2009 he gradually emerged from a pile of 999 rocks while painting on each of them the imaginary routes of a spiritual ascension Some of Hes performances have involved immense pain and interventions into his own body including staring at close distance at 256 light bulbs for an hour the surgical removal of one of his ribs and most famously One Meter of Democracy 2010 In the latter work 25 participants collectively voted to carry out the artists proposal of having his own body cut with 1meterlong opening without anesthetics and stayed to witness its fulfillment While shocking at first glance these works like Hes oeuvre as a whole always reveal a deep engagement with both contemporary art discourse and classical Chinese philosophy as well as a delicate sensitivity towards the salient questions of our time By treating his own body as both medium and object he turns abstract philosophical concepts and the amorphous transformations of our times into experiences that are concretely comprehensible and lived Indeed He Yunchang refers to his practice in Chinese as xianchang yishu or live art in distinction to the sense of performance as acting