He Yunchang (born 1967), also known as A Chang, is a Chinese performance artist.

Life and career

He Yunchang was born in

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

, southwest China, in 1967. He graduated from the Yunnan Art Institute in 1991 with a degree in oil painting and moved to Beijing in 1998, where he developed conceptual performances. Often held in nature and contrasting the natural world with the body's limits, his performances were based on He's ideas of space and time. Most of the performances had no outcome. His original performances were held in Kunming, but eventually expanded to Beijing. His 1999 Kunming performance ''Dialogue with Water'' is documented with the artist dangling from a crane above an active river, extending a knife to cut the river's flow. In ''Wrestle: One and One Hundred'' (2001), He wrestled one hundred Kunming men and mostly lost. Despite his failures, the works became mythical in their audacity, like folklore. He is known for his endurance performance works. In 2004, he cemented himself in a block for a day. In 2007, he carried a rock around the perimeter of the island of Great Britain, returning the rock to the place he picked it up. In He's ''One Meter Democracy'' (2010), he proposed that he would cut himself one meter from his clavicle to his knee and held a pseudo-democratic vote as to whether he would continue with the procedure. The majority voted in favor and a medical doctor performed the cut. In March 2012, he began sleeping outside in

Caochangdi Caochangdi () was an urban village and renowned arts district located in the Chaoyang District, Beijing, Chaoyang District of northeast Beijing at the intersection of the 5th Ring Road and Airport Expressway. Translated as "grasslands" in Mandarin, ...

until the grass grew. The work was documented through social media. He's ''Conversation with the River'' shows a documentary photograph featuring the artist dangling upside down from a crane over a river.

Exhibitions

Chambers Fine Art Chambers Fine Art is an art gallery based in New York City and Beijing that specializes in Chinese contemporary art. Opened in New York in 2000 by Christophe Mao. Notable Chinese artists who had their first solo show in the United States at Chamb ...

hosted his first American solo show in December 2007. He was one of seven Chinese artists representing the country at the 2013 Venice Biennale. In ''The Water of Venice'', he filled 2,013 numbered and signed bottles of seawater. In 2021, Yunchang is having his first major solo show in Europe, at the Francisco Carolinum in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, entitled ''He Yunchang - Golden Sunshine''. The exhibition will be curated by

Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei (, ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly c ...

.
September 2021.

Life and career

Exhibitions

References

Further reading