Born in 1965, Zhang Huan is a Chinese artist based in Shanghai and New York City. He is a performance artist but also makes photographs and sculptures. His career began as a painter and then transitioned to performance art, before making a comeback to painting. Living among a community of artists in an impoverished neighborhood on the outskirts of Beijing, Zhang created several performances that tested the limits of discomfort that his body could endure.
The artist coated himself in honey and fish oil to attract swarms of flies as he sat motionless in a slovenly public bathroom of 12 Square Meters (1994). In 65 Kilograms (1994), titled after the artist’s weight, Zhang suspended himself naked by chains hung from the ceiling as two doctors drew 250 milliliters of blood from his body; the blood, dripping into a pan resting on a hot plate, diffused into the room amid the smell of disinfectant. During Zhang’s last three years in Beijing, his performances grew in scale and number of participants; for example, in 1997, Zhang and forty local workers waded into a fishpond to raise the water level.
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