CategoriesStyles and Movements
Beijing East Village
Artist community on the eastern edge of Beijing in 1993–94 whose members made raw, endurance-based performance art, known through photographs.
No works indexed yet · 8 related artists
No open-access works for Beijing East Village are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
In 1993 a handful of young artists, many without official jobs, rented cheap rooms in a poor farming village east of central Beijing. Borrowing the name of New York's bohemian quarter, they called it the East Village, and for about a year it was a hub of Chinese performance art.
The work put the naked body under strain in squalid conditions. Zhang Huan sat smeared with honey and fish oil in a public latrine for 12 Square Meters (1994) and hung chained from a ceiling in 65 kg (1994). Ma Liuming performed as Fen-Ma Liuming, an androgynous alter ego. Few saw these actions live; they survive largely through photographs by Rong Rong, who lived in the village. Police arrested Ma during a performance in 1994, and the community scattered. In 1995 former members collaborated on To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain, stacking their bodies on a hilltop.
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