He Yunchang: Exploring the link between performance art and ancient Chinese philosophies
13th May, 2020
He Yunchang (b. 1967), a contemporary Chinese performance artist, completed his art studies at the Central Yunnan Art Institute in 1991 in China. Before establishing himself with performances, he delved into various art forms such as painting, photography, sculpture, and jewelry making. His later performances are highly symbolic, infused with classical references to age-old Chinese mythology and philosophy. He’s iconic mark in his works is his self-subjection to dramatic bodily pain, such as a one-metre long incision across the body, surgically removing a rib, and casting himself inside of concrete. Through these borderline sacrificial feats, He aims to combine modern existentialism with traditional Chinese philosophy and mythology.
The integrity of these artistic performances resides within his continued willingness to expend his body for the sake of developing his own ‘language.’ He’s artist language has become globally recognisable over the years since he began developing this new media, with traits unique to his works. These traits include his allegories to oriental philosophical beliefs, especially Zen Buddhism, which describes human to have both a spirit and a physical body and in order to reach enlightenment, one can either combine the spiritual and physical or sacrifice the physical. The latter is reminiscent of the methodology behind He’s famous performance pieces.
This essay aims to investigate his artistic practice, focusing on He’s performances that test the extreme limits of human endurance. Working with multiple mediums (such as performance, video, and photography), his practice combines contemporary notions of existentialism in China with ancient Chinese philosophies. His projects seem to question and establish a mild, albeit sophisticated dialogue of the fundamental limits of what we, as human beings, can do on Earth. He looks to achieve this through reoccurring Buddhistic themes, such as endurance, persistence, and resistance. He’s performances are explored within the framework of ancient Oriental philosophies such as Zen Buddhism and in the context of his status as an eminently political artist in contemporary China, leading to a discussion of the relationship between performance art and modern politics.
Photograph of He Yunchang in his studio by Sam Beard, 2019.
Despite graduating with a qualification in traditional painting , He Yunchang went on to become a performance artist. He accomplished this through a series of remarkable performance pieces that tested and explored the fundamental limits of the human experience on Earth. He’s turn to performance art was fuelled by his core beliefs that his body as a new media for art would allow him the greatest freedom to express himself and his ideas. He proposes states of spirit, mind and body through extreme feats that explore the fundamental limits of the human experience on Earth. He agrees that he utilises his body as a new media that has no requirement for an audience or a gallery space. It allows him the intellectual freedom to express what he wants without restriction, which marks this medium as different from any other, yet still as powerful. His projects may initially seem to be over- the-top stunts, showing off his courage and exceptional resilience to pain. However, with closer inspection, they are highly referential works of performance art. Endurance and resistance, for example are among a few of the fundamental themes of Buddhism, which are also critical themes within He Yunchang’s works of art.
These themes are evident in Dialogue with Water (1999). In this piece, he hung himself upside down over the Liang River in Yunnan by a crane. Before hoisting himself up into a state of suspension, he had a local butcher make two single incisions one centimetre deep into both his upper arms. That same knife used to cut into his arms was used to performs ‘cuts’ into the fast-flowing currents below as he hangs within arms range of the river. The blood from his arm dripped and mingled with the river currents. This performance piece lasted for over half an hour. He calculated that he had made a “cut” into the river of about 4 500 metres in length. This attempt at cutting a river in two halves with a knife is itself set up a premise of futile resistance, as in no matter how much one resists, it is still a hopeless battle. His project was designed to show the futility of his effort to impose his will upon the river. It is reminiscent of Buddhist teachings around the acceptance of the futility and meaninglessness of life. At the same time, it touched on the struggle and perseverance of an individual, which appears to be a common characteristic in many of his works like a subsequent performance piece in 1998, Appointment with Tomorrow. In this work, he was covered in mud from head to toe. For more than an hour, documented on a camera, he continued to dial random numbers on a disconnected telephone. The piece expressed his ideas exploring the notion of futile persistence against the struggles of life. It achieves this by showing it through the absurdity of his ineffective actions, which are without result and yet do not act as a deterrent for him to stop.
Another example of He’s use of Buddhist themes in his art pieces is One Metre Democracy (2010). It is a performance piece where He Yunchang invited twenty-five individuals to vote whether or not he should have a one metre long incision, about a centimetre deep, performed by a medical profession without the use of anaesthesia, on his body. Those invited were asked to voteand He repeated the vote until the majority conceded to yes. Eventually, twelve voted in favour of the operation, ten voted against, and three abstained altogether. The performance was documented in a photographs and video, which reveal the emotional weight of witnessing such a gruesome surgery. Those who watch the video can almost feel the cut on their own bodies, like a more extreme case of phantom pain. In other words, the performance piece challenged not only He’s own endurance, but the endurance of the onlookers. His body turned work of art calls to question the suffering experienced by humans, which is along the lines of some of the truths in Buddhism. This is exemplified when he is seen lying peacefully after the whole procedure has been completed, suggesting enlightenment and peace is found through the pain and through questioning the truth around you.
Another work in the same vein is One Rib (2008). For this performance piece, He Yunchang had excised a twenty-five centimetre section from his eighth rib bone on his left side. He Yunchang had initially planned to have one of his more extended ribs taken out. However, the surgeon advised against such a dangerous and unnecessary procedure and instead suggested this as an alternative. Due to the nature of the procedure and the surgeon’s conditions for performing it, most of the performance was done while He Yunchang was unconscious and anesthetised, very different from how he usually practices his performance works. This departure from his usual works is partly due to the responsibility that works with involving others in his performance, and seeking a surgeon would even be willing to perform such a potentially disastrous surgery. It took He Yunchang some years of painstaking negotiation to remove his rib to make art. Another way to look at it is that He purposely subverted some of the critical parts of his previous works of art, wherein his body’s capabilities to endure and persist play a crucial role in the success of his works. The most potent part of this performance happens in the documentation stage that follows. He created a highly symbolic necklace out of his rib, structured in the shape of a double-headed mythological animal (resembling a dragon). The dragon of his necklace is just one of the many references he makes to Chinese myths and philosophies. Before making the final necklace, they were other versions he used to capture a series of photographs of important women in his life wearing that necklace. He Yunchang’s work is a carefully planned performance, with references to core Buddhist themes, which he expresses by putting his body, and in this case his ribs, through unnecessary, severe bodily pain and injuries.
He Yunchang’s background in traditional arts indicates that he could have undoubtedly pursued a career in the mainstream art world. However, he had a desire to free himself from this world, seeking to develop his own ‘language’, through numerous allegories to ancient Chinese philosophies, especially Buddhist themes. The commonality across his works lie in the wayhis performances’ key reoccurring motifs are around the use of his body as a media art form, to explores themes of human endurance and persistence through projects with exhausting and or futile premises. He goes above and beyond to capture, in particular, how humans struggle through hopeless situations, something that is explored in Buddhism and other Chinese philosophies in the way of persisting through the meaninglessness of existence. This is although at first glance, He Yunchang’s works make one want to claw out their eyes in order to end the onslaught of phantom pain in witnessing such gruelling acts. In a way, he invokes in viewers the same feeling that he puts himself through. In other words, the key themes he explores in almost all his works of art is persistence and endurance. That is, to endure the project as a participant and to endure watching the project as an onlooker. Regardless, He Yunchang’s performance works without a doubt invites the audience into a meditative state of reflection.
Works Cited
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The extreme performance art of He Yunchang | Art | Agenda | Phaidon. [online] Available at: https://au.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2013/october/27/the- extreme-performance-art-of-he-yunchang/ [Accessed 2 Aug. 2019].
Ink Studio. (2019). He Yunchang 何 云 昌 . [online] Available at: https://www.inkstudio.com.cn/artists/78-he-yunchang/overview/ [Accessed 3 Aug. 2019].
Huang, Bingyi & Huang, Bingyi (2006) Go with the flow: He Yunchang’s performance art at Niagra Falls. ART AsiaPacific. (48), 43–43. [online]. Available from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1320244390/.
Fok, Silvia. (2013) Life and death : art and the body in contemporary China . Bristol: Intellect.
Publichouseofart.com. (2019). Crazy Artist Of The Month: He Yunchang - The Public House of Art. [online] Available at: https://publichouseofart.com/blog/crazy-artist-of-the- month-he-yunchang [Accessed 2 Aug. 2019].
Artwrite 54. (2019). The Cost of Democracy. [online] Available at: https://artwrite54.wordpress.com/portfolio/democracy-for-all/ [Accessed 3 Aug. 2019].
En.artintern.net. (2019). On He Yunchang's project "One Rib" - Reviews - Artintern.net. [online] Available at: http://en.artintern.net/index.php/review/main/html/4/1007 [Accessed 3 Aug. 2019].
Cover image by Darren Jorgensen, featuring He Yunchang and Harry Price.