A Chinese Performance Artist
Who Balances Politics and Poetics
on December 30, 2015
Zhou Bin performing ‘Puzzling Tracks’(2014) (all images courtesy the artist)
CHENGDU, China — In a series ofeighthourlong actions titled Puzzling Tracks, Zhou Bin placed an ant ona piece of
rice paper. The ant was free to move around the paper, but it waspenned in by four walls along the edges. As it
explored the space, Zhou Binfollowed it with a pencil, creating a durational drawing. At a recentforum, an audience
member commented that most of the lines were gathered on theboundaries of the space. “The ants are quite focused
on the reality of theirpredicament,” the Chengdu-based artist responded. “They don’t waste much timein
the middle. They walk around the edge looking for a way out.”
Like many of Zhou Bin’sworks, Puzzling Tracks began as a simple observation — the behaviorof insects in his house
— and moved into a metaphorical realm to examine theforces governing his life. Completed in 2014,Puzzling Tracks
was also aset of actions that resulted in physical artworks (the pencil-on paperdrawings), making it an important
precursor to a major series that Zhou Binexecuted this year, Mind in a Box.
Zhou Bin, ‘Puzzling Tracks’ (2014)
Curated by Lan Qingwei, acting director ofthe ChengduMuseum of Contemporary Art, Mind in aBox consists of 12
works completed over the course of 2015. All of theworks were made in collaboration with artisans or audience
members. In“Diaries, 1986-2015,” Zhou Bin asked a centuries-old papermaking studio to pulp30 years of his
diaries and recycle them into blank notebooks. “Entrusted” involvedthree participants — Zhou Bin, a
construction worker, and a waitress — whostood on pedestals holding bags of wet cement until they were unable
to do soany longer (the waitress was the last to set hers down, after 20 minutes).
Zhou Bin, “Entrusted” (2015) (click toenlarge)
Mind in a Box continues two decades ofZhou Bin’s experimentation with performance art. Born in 1970, he was
trainedas an oil painter but gave up painting when he encountered performance art in1997. “After that, I felt
it would be silly to spend spend my days spreadingpaint on a canvas,” he said. He has since become one of the
most activeperformance artists in China and frequently participates in internationalfestivals. His work addresses
topics ranging from daily minutiae togeopolitics. “It seems many artists select a topic or a field and then
justmake work about it,” he said. “But I see no reason to set out in advance whatI’m going to say.”
Since the late 1980s and early ’90s, whenChinese artists began experimenting with performance art (the most
widely usedterm is xingwei yishu, which translates to “action art”), there has been astrong tradition of
addressing political and social issues with the form. Manyof these works have drawn attention domestically and
abroad for their extremeboundary pushing. Zhu Yu famously gnawed on what was reported to be a baby’scorpse
(“Eating People,” 2000). Artist He Yunchang carried out a series ofperformances that permanently damaged his
body, including the recent “One Meter Democracy”(2010), in which he made a one-meter-long incision in his
body after a votefrom the audience.
Zhou Bin, “One RMB Coin” (2006)
Zhou Bin has never carried out anything nearlyas extreme, but he has completed many politically themed works that
have pushedhis body to the point of breakdown. Referring to government censorship, herepeated the Chinese term for
“sensitive word” until he was physically unableto continue (“Sensitive Word,” 2000). In “One RMB Coin” (2006),
he held a coinin his mouth until he began drooling and crying uncontrollably. He draws adistinction, however, between
these works and those of some of hiscontemporaries. “Many performance artists make works that compare [their]limits,”
he said. “Their actions are violent, sometimes to the point that feelslike the limit in question is the audience’s
ability to deal with it … I preferto design a method that puts me in a state in which I am no longer in control.”
During our conversations, Zhou Binsometimes downplayed the political content of his art. When I asked him andcurator
Lan Qingwei about the decision to use concrete in the work “Entrusted,”the artist said concrete simply had the most
suitable physical properties forthe work. Lan Qingwei disagreed, however, saying that Zhou Bin is not obliviousto the
social connotations of concrete, a material which signals the urbandevelopment that has transformed modern China.
For “Reaction: Vomiting in Nanjing” (2005),Zhou Bin walked through an art museum
and vomited before any works he liked ordisliked.
To understand Zhou Bin’s reluctance toembrace political art, it’s helpful to examine the internal dynamics of the
Chinese art world. Following the tremendous international success of Ai Weiwei,some in the Chinese art community have
come to see political artwork as a ployto garner attention from foreign curators and collectors. They believe that
AiWeiwei’s success overseas derives not from his work, but from a foreign,largely Western audience’s ideology driven
fascination with art that opposesCommunism. Zhou Bin told me that when he travels abroad, “even old folksliving
in rural towns ask me about Ai Weiwei. At that point it can’t possiblybe related to his work, because art simply
isn’t that powerful.
“Making art about an important topic is notthe same as making important art,” he continued, emphasizing that no
matterwhat topic the work addresses, it must contribute to the larger contemporaryart discourse. Zhou Bin engages
deeply with the international history ofperformance art and the philosophies behind it, and his work has evolved
ashe’s incorporated new ideas. The series Mind in a Box was amajor departure from much of his previous work because
the actions resulted inthe creation of three-dimensional objects. Zhou Bin exhibited theseobjects at the Macao
Museum of Art’s fourth annual Inward Gazes: Documentaries of Chinese Performance Art exhibitionin November. The paper
from “Diaries, 1986-2015” was on view, as were thehardened concrete blobs that had been shaped during “Entrusted.”
These objects— physical records of ephemeral actions — allow a secondary audience to have amore direct connection
with Zhou Bin’s performances.
Zhou Bin, “Darker and Darker” (2015)
Zhou Bin’s ongoing engagement with themethodology of performance art is also evident in the expanding range of
poeticgestures he uses to comment on aspects of daily life and relationships. In“Walker” (2010), he hiked along
the ridges of a mountainous pile of coal untilhe had leveled it into a smooth parabola. In a live action this year
titled“Darker and Darker,” he lowered a light bulb into a bucket of cow bloodrepeatedly, letting the layers of
dried blood slowly blot out the light. Andin a seven hour performance completed in 2014, he threw 7,316 pearls
one for each day he had been married — against a gallery wall and then gatheredthem.
In recent years, Zhou Bin has allowed thisnuanced complexity to help shape his politically oriented works. Among
hismost poignant pieces is 2009’s “Following,” for which he went to TiananmenSquare and began following an ant
making its way across the ground. As he did,plain-clothes and uniformed police officers noticed his strange
behavior andbegan following him. By focusing on a single insect, Zhou Bin had swiftly andeffectively replicated
the power dynamic between himself and the state.
Zhou Bin, “Following” (2009) (click toenlarge)
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